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MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS 
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THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS 
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CONTENTS 


INTRODUCTION 


2TIT R24 ke ryy/ 


AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL 


How I Have Kept My HEALTH anp WorkK- 
ING PowER TILL EIGHTY i , 


BIOGRAPHICAL AND REMINISCENT 


Epes SARGENT DIXwELL : : 
James RusseEL_L LOWELL 

OLIVER WENDELL HoLMEs 

LANGDELL AND THE Law ScHOOL 

Tue Acassiz House on Quincy STREET 


Human Soctety 


THe Woman TuHat WILL SuRVIVE 
BRINGING UP A Boy ‘ 
ADVANTAGES OF Poor MEN’s Sons 


EpucaTION 


NEEDED CHANGES IN SECONDARY EDUCATION 
PROTECTION AGAINST IGNORANCE 
AMERICAN EDUCATION SINCE THE CIVIL War 


LAaBor PROBLEMS 


Tue Roap To INDUSTRIAL PEACE . i 
vs ie PuBLic OPINION ABOUT STRIKES : 


AX 


MEDICINE AND PuBLic HEALTH 


THE Future or MEDICINE 
. PRESENT AND FuTuRE SOCIAL Hyciene IN 


RD AMERICA : : : ; : : 


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051034 


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17 
22 
32 
45 
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67 
75 


93 


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195 


203 


RELIGION 


THE Cryinc NEED ofr A RENEWED CuHRIS- 

TIANITY ; : 
A FREE AND OPEN CHRISTIAN CHURCH 
THE Joyru, Duty or THE LayMAN . 


Tue CountTrY AND THE WorRLD 


Wuat Is an AMERICAN? 

ZIONISM 

PROHIBITION : 

Tue Next AMERICAN CONTRIBUTION TO 
CIVILIZATION . 


BIBLIOGRAPHY, 1914-1924 


213 
232 
237 


ae 
253 
261 


268 


297 


INTRODUCTION 


Ar the forefront of this book it should be said that the 
thought of bringing together the papers here assembled had 
its origin entirely with the publishers. As the ninetieth anni- 
versary of the birth of President Eliot — March 20, 1924 — 
was drawing near, it was suggested to him that many of his 
friends and admirers, in other words a large portion of the 
American public, would welcome, as a Festschrift of conspicu- 
ous value and fitness, a volume containing typical products 
of his extraordinary vigor of mind and body through the 
years between eighty and ninety. To this project he gave his 
consent. It has been fulfilled without further consulta- 
tion with him; and these words of introduction are printed 
without his having seen them. 

The editor of the volume found himself immediately face 
to face with an embarrassment of riches. The course of least 
resistance would have been to make two or three volumes 
instead of one. Since many eliminations from an amazingly 
large mass of material were inevitable, it seemed best to 
select for illustration a group of topics — finally fixed at 
eight in number — under each of which one or more papers 
of special significance should be presented. Fortune was 
kind in offering for the opening paper an article, ““How I Have 
Kept My Health and Working Power till Eighty,” published 
in the first year of President Eliot’s ninth decade. The re- 
mainder of the book could then be devoted to suggesting what 
he has done with his health and working power since eighty. 
The papers classified as “ Biographical and Reminiscent” fill 
the second division of the book, closely related to the first 
because in the very nature of reminiscence there is an 
element of autobiography. With that division, however, 


viil INTRODUCTION 


President Eliot’s contemplation of the past may be said to 
end. The greater proportion of space allotted to questions 
still in process of solution requires no justification, for in 
this latest decade, as always heretofore, President Eliot has 
been far more concerned with the future than with the past. 

The observant reader will detect in the table of contents 
the omission of papers relating directly to the World War, a 
subject to which many pages might have been devoted. 
There are two reasons for this: the first, that in 1915 President 
Eliot published a volume, The Road towards Peace: a Contribu- 
tion to the Study of the Causes of the European War and the 
Means of Preventing War in the Future, an accessible book 
embodying many of the views on which his thinking through- 
out the war was based; the second, that, in the necessary 
processes of elimination, it appeared advisable to drop first 
the papers written for an immediate and strictly contem- 
poraneous purpose. A glance at the bibliography printed at 
the end of this volume will indicate the extent of President 
Eliot’s contribution to the paramount topic in the thought 
of the world from 1914 to 1918. The titles of his many war- 
time papers suggest, quite characteristically, where he stood 
on the subjects with which they dealt. 

Of the bibliography a further word should be said. The 
purpose of this volume would stand but inadequately realized 
without it. The selections chosen for the body of the book 
speak for themselves. They cannot speak for the mass from 
which they are drawn, and it is in the range and scope of 
that mass that a unique phenomenon of individual produc- 
tion appears. Nor does the bibliography tell the entire 
story. It does not record the reports of many speeches pre- 
pared for special occasions, many brief letters to the public 
press, many inscriptions for memorial tablets, representing a 
type of difficult composition in which President Eliot has long 
been acknowledged a master. Its record of available printed 
sources is nevertheless important. 


INTRODUCTION 1X 


On October 11, 1923, the Massachusetts Historical Society 
celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of President Eliot’s elec- 
tion to its membership. In the course of his remarks on that 
occasion he said: — 


In all the early part of my career as a teacher and an educational 
administrator I was much engaged in controversy, not to say com- 
bat, and that at home as well as outside of Harvard. In all my 
public appearances during those years I had a vivid sense that I 
was addressing an adverse audience. Now to-day is a very delight- 
ful illustration of a change that has come over my experience. For 
twenty years past, I should think, I have found myself often in the 
presence of a favoring audience — of one that wished, at any rate, 
to agree with me, or, if they could not, regretted that they could not. 


The “‘ favoring audience” is no longer to be found, or accom- 
modated, in any single auditorium. It has learned to recognize 
in the written and the spoken words of President Eliot — 
identical in their tone and quality — the utterances of a cou- 
rageous, far-seeing, inspiriting leader of men, more vigorous 
and serviceable —to use one of his favorite words — at ninety 
than many another leader at sixty. In the annals of mankind 
it would be difficult to parallel the extent and long continu- 
ance of his liberating and stimulating influence upon the 
more thoughtful men and women of his country. For many 
years he has been counted its foremost citizen. In his own 
person, moreover, he has refuted psalmist and scientist. 
The ninetieth anniversary of his birth should be antici- 
pated and remembered as a day for looking forward, 
with the unquenchable spirit of hope and _ confidence 
invariably characteristic of Charles William Eliot, born 
March 20, 1834. 

M. A. DeWo re Howe. 
ATLANTIC OrricE, Boston 
JANUARY, 1924 


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HOW I HAVE KEPT MY HEALTH AND 
WORKING POWER .TILL EIGHTY * 


I must have inherited from my parents what is called 
a sound constitution. Five of my father’s and mother’s 
seven children lived beyond forty-five, and my oldest 
sister still survives at the age of eighty-seven. 

Looking back on the family habits in my childhood, I 
perceive that the family diet was simple, that the chil- 
dren kept early hours, that our parents took care that we 
should have exercise in the open air every day, and that 
we should spend two months in the country or by the 
seasideevery summer. My parents both inherited acom- 
fortable property, and lived in one of the best houses of 
that day in Boston; but they had no luxurious habits — 
those sure destroyers of family stocks. They hired horses 
freely, but had no private stable in Boston. Cleanliness of 
house and person was strictly observed, but there was no 
plumbing in the house until I was a well-grown boy. 
The advent about 1844 of a coal-burning hot-air furnace, 
which opened only into the entry and dining-room, was 
a great event. During my residence in Harvard College 
as student and teacher (1849-58), I depended for 
warmth in winter entirely on an open fire in my room, 
the entries being as cold as outdoors. Whether or not 
this prevailing discomfort indoors during the cold 
weather had any influence on health is an open question. 


1From The Ladies’ Home fournal, April 1914. 


Mi A LATE HARVEST 


At seven years of age I was transferred from a dame 
school to a private school for boys, kept by a Harvard 
graduate under Park Street Church, opposite the ample 
Boston Common. At that time the Common was a 
delightful playground for boys. We lived in the heart of 
a small city, but had some of the advantages of country 
life. We played there the simple games of ball then in 
vogue, and hopscotch and marbles in their season; and 
there we had admirable coasting in winter. Great elms 
and thrifty lindens were to be seen there, and green grass 
half the year. One of our sports was running races round 
the Common on the outer brick sidewalk. The circuit 
was something over a mile in length, and the competition 
for the run in the shortest time was keen. Like all my 
sisters I was sent to dancing-school, taught to ride on 
horseback, and encouraged to accompany my father on 
his daily walk. 

At ten years of age I was transferred to the Boston 
Latin School, where the course of study contained noth- 
ing but Latin and Greek, a little mathematics, and a 
little ancient history. It offered boys of from ten to 
seventeen years of age no modern language, no sys- 
tematic training in English, and no science, drawing, or 
music. It gave a strenuous training of the memory 
through language and literature, forced its pupils to 
apply themselves to work as well as was possible when 
the work had little or no interest, and got them hand- 
somely into the Harvard College of that day. 

Seeing the grave deficiencies of the Latin School’s 
programme, my father took pains to procure for me 


HOW I HAVE KEPT MY HEALTH 5 


lessons in carpentering and wood-turning, and provided 
me at home with tools, a carpenter’s bench, and a lathe. 
He also furthered a desire I felt —in common with a 
fellow pupil at the Latin School — to set type and issue 
a four-page weekly paper, each page about six inches 
square. We seldom wrote anything for this paper, but 
we did set the type, work the hand press, and correct the 
proofs. In these various ways I got some good training 
of eye and hand, for which the programme of my school 
made no provision whatever. Till I was twenty years 
old I had no practice in drawing, either mechanical or 
freehand — a serious loss. 

In my boyhood the family spent July and August at 
Nahant. ThereI was outdoors nearly allthe time. There 
I learned to find mushrooms on the rough pasture lands, 
to row a boat, and to fish for perch and tautog off the 
rocks. But the summer experience which I remember 
with the greatest pleasure was roaming about on horse- 
back, a privilege secured on terms which well illustrate 
my parents’ views concerning my physical education. 
In the preceding spring I had occasionally ridden an 
amiable and sprightly horse named Brilliant. Arrived at 
Nahant, I asked my father whether I could n’t have 
Brilliant there. He said, “‘Yes, provided you will take 
all the care of him”’—a proposition I gladly accepted. 

For two or three years before I went to college at 
fifteen I had much enjoyed two walking-sports. The first 
was visiting, sometimes with my father, sometimes with 
boy comrades, the places mentioned in Frothingham’s 
Siege of Boston, as sites of camps, forts, or engagements. 


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6 A LATE HARVEST 


These excursions took us to the North End, Charles- 
town, South Boston, Roxbury Neck, Cambridge, and 
Somerville — somewhat adventurous excursions for a 
small boy, when the native boys of those regions were 
wont to object to the advent of a stranger. The second 
form of walking-sport was practised in this wise: three or 
four boys would take train for a few miles out of Boston, 
and then walk across the broken country from six to ten 
miles to some station on the next railroad, whence they 
took train for home. This was an instructive and in- 
teresting sport for city boys in free afternoons of either 
spring or autumn, but best in the long days of spring. 
. My mother took the best accessible advice about the 
care of her children’s teeth and saw that we followed it 
approximately. Experiencehas convinced me that dental 
hygiene is an important department of preventive medi- 
cine. Neither of my parents took enough thought for 
their children’s eyes. The lamp by which I worked 
winter evenings and mornings used whale oil and had 
two round wicks, each about as large as an ordinary 
pencil. Over the flame was a tin shade, painted white 
inside. I was congenitally nearsighted, and the difficulty 
increased considerably during my childhood and youth, 
perhaps because of the hard use I gave my eyes on gram- 
mars and dictionaries and much ordinary reading. This 
defective vision cut me off from some desirable sports 
and entertainments, and prevented me from recogniz- 
ing my friends on the street, unless they had a charac- 
teristic figure, walk, or clothing. It has been a serious 
obstacle all my life, for no oculist has ever been able 
to procure for me full vision. 


HOW I HAVE KEPT MY HEALTH 7 


While still a pupil in the Latin School I attended a 
Boston gymnasium, where I learned to use the common 
gymnastic apparatus, such as ladders, parallel bars, the 
vaulting-horse, the vaulting-bar, and swings ; and when 
at last Harvard College acquired a gymnasium, in 1856, 
I had an opportunity of renewing these exercises after an 
interval of about seven years. While I was an under- 
graduate I took several series of boxing lessons, and re- 
newed them later when a college teacher. 

While in college my chief exercise was walking, for 
there was then no organized sport for undergraduates 
and no gymnasium. 

In 1856, being at that time a tutor, I joined a new 
boat-club which was mainly recruited among professional 
students, and was intended to furnish pleasurable exer- 
cise to its members, but not to prepare men for races. As 
I proved in this club to be a strong and enduring oars- 
man, in the spring of 1858 I was invited to join the Har- 
vard crew of that year, because it had proved impossible 
to find six undergraduates competent and willing to row. 
The Harvard crew had been heavily defeated by a 
Boston crew on the Charles River Basin in the preceding 
year, and it was understood that the crew of 1858 was to 
use an unstable kind of boat called a shell. Accordingly 
four undergraduates and two graduates — Alexander 
Agassiz and I — made up the Harvard crew of that year. 
This crew was successful in two regattas on the Basin, 
winning the first prizes against a large number of crews 
composed chiefly of vigorous young men who could 
hardly be described as amateurs. That spring I was do- 
ing a large amount of work as a tutor, and was building 


8 A LATE HARVEST 


a block of two brick houses in Cambridge, the plans 
for which I had drawn — one for my parents who had 
recently lost all their property, and one in which I hoped 
to live myself, for I had just been made assistant pro- 
fessor in Harvard College, a promotion which suggested 
that I could have permanent employment in the Univer- 
sity. My rowing was therefore only an agreeable inci- 
dental exercise, and by no means my main occupation. 
It should be observed, however, that I was twenty-four 
years old, and that the sliding seat had not yet come into 
use. Obviously I possessed a sound muscular and nery- 
ous system, capable of much regular physical work 
without fatigue, and of occasional severe exertion; but I 
was not heavy or large-boned, for my normal weight was 
only from one hundred and forty-five to one hundred 
and fifty pounds. 

I have never been a large eater. I have eaten in 
moderate quantities a good variety of food, for I have 
always been able to assimilate comfortably any article of 
food or drink used in the countries where I have lived. I 
have not eaten so much meat, butter, and eggs as most 
of the men with whom I have been intimate or whom I 
have met at public luncheons and dinners. This modera- 
tion was natural to me and not the result of any peculiar 
wisdom or lively sense of duty. In the second half of my 
life I often had to speak at public or semipublic dinners ; 
under such circumstances the only safe way is to eat 
lightly. It seems to me that people who bolt a large 
amount of food, as a dog does when he has a chance, do 
not get so much pleasure out of eating as slower and 


HOW I HAVE KEPT MY HEALTH 9 


more moderate feeders. I imagine that my good health 
has been largely owing to my moderation in eating and 
drinking and to the habit of daily exercise. 

\ It is high time to speak of my mental habits. I began 
as a boy to use my mind intently several hours a day. As 
a college student, I increased the number of hours a day 
of mental occupation.) In the Harvard College of my 
undergraduate days no laboratory instruction was given 
to the students; the sciences had to be learned from 
books and a few illustrated lectures) In my freshman 
year I became much interested in chemistry, and from 
the beginning of my sophomore year I had the privilege 
of working in the small chemical laboratory which Josiah 
Parsons Cooke, instructor in chemistry, and soon (1851) 
to be appointed professor of chemistry, was allowed to 
fit up at his own expense in the basement of University 
Hall. During the last three years of my college course I 
did much work in that little laboratory every week, in 
addition to attending all the recitations required of my 
class, and doing well in all the studies of the regular 


course. To the best of my knowledge and belief I was 


the only undergraduate in Harvard College who had the 
privilege of studying a science by the laboratory method. 

This intimate association with Professor Cooke in the 
study of chemistry and mineralogy led to a very agree- 
able and profitable method of using the summer vaca- 
tion, then only six weeks long. For several summers I 
went on walking-journeys with Professor Cooke, visiting 
mineral localities, mines, and metallurgical works. These 


oe 


— 


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IO A LATE HARVEST 


journeys took us over many parts of Nova Scotia, New 
Brunswick, New England, New York, New Jersey, and 
Pennsylvania, and gave me my first experience in col- 
lecting specimens, in studying factories, mines, iron fur- 
naces, foundries, and zinc works in operation, and in 
observing topography and the forces which have modeled 
the crust of the earth. 
"Tn assisting Professor Cooke in the researches he was 
then conducting, I got my first insight into the meaning 
and method of scientific research, an experience which 
has been of great service to me ever since. How little 
labor needed to be spent on the regular course of study 
in Harvard College at that time may be inferred from 
the large amount of extra work I was able to do in the 
last three years of my college course. Because of the 
profitable and enjoyable use I then made of the summer 
vacations, I was eager to support Professor Asa Gray, 
Professor Cooke, and Professor Louis Agassiz twenty 
years later, when they set up summer courses in botany, 
chemistry, and zoology, open to both men and women — 
the beginning of the summer schools now so useful to 
thousands of students in many parts of the country. — 
From the time I became a tutor, at the age of twenty, 
onward, I think I have done per day an unusual amount 
of mental work, much of which, however, has had a 
routine or repetitive character, as in all teaching and 
administration. From the time of my appointment to 
an assistant professorship, in the spring of 1858, and my 
marriage in the following autumn, I have borne without 
intermission considerable responsibilities, both family 


HOW I HAVE KEPT MY HEALTH II 


and professional, which involved anxiety, a sense of risk, 
and sometimes professional conflict. That I have borne 
much labor and responsibility without ever suffering 
even a temporary breakdown seems to me to be due — 
after the inheritance of a sound constitution — to my 
possessing a good muscular and nervous system, pre- 
served by open-air exercise and the habit of moderate 
eating. It may have contributed to the fortunate result 
that at no time of my life have I ever made habitual use 
of any nerve stimulant like tea, coffee, tobacco, or alco- 
hol, although I have never been a total abstainer from 
any one of these stimulants except tobacco. When I 
have taken them it has always been in dilute forms. 

It undoubtedly contributed to my endurance of the 
laborious and responsible life I led as President of Har- 
vard College for forty years that, beginning in 1871, I 
passed the long summer vacation at or near the island of 
Mount Desert, devoting, however, part of the time 
during the first nine years to cruising in a seaworthy 
sloop along the New England coast from Block Island to 
Grand Manan. This summer life gave me a strong and 
wholesome change of air and scene, and also of mental 
occupation, for I went skipper and pilot. It provided for 
me and my family during nearly a quarter part of the 
year a simple, wholesome, natural life in close contact 
with the ocean, woods, and hills, with opportunity for 
various excellent kinds of physical and mental activity, 
and with freedom from the turmoil, noise, dirt, foul air, 
and nervous tension of city life. 

One result of the balance between my bodily and 


12 A LATE HARVEST 


mental powers has been that I have always been able to 
sleep well at night, and, since I was seventy, briefly in the 
daytime also. I could always spend a long evening in 
stirring debate or in public speaking, and go to sleep, on 
getting home, without delay or need of any calming 
process. I could also write diligently all the evening on 
a subject which greatly interested me, stop at eleven 
o'clock, and fall asleep the moment I got into bed. 

I am aware of two mental or moral conditions which 
have contributed to my safe endurance of physical and 
mental strains. The firstisanatural gift, namely, acalm 
temperament; the second is the result of a combination 
of this temperament with a deliberate practice of avoid- 
ing alike anticipations of disappointment and vain re- 
srets. When necessarily involved in contests or critical 
undertakings, I tried first to do my best in the actual 
struggle, and then not toconcern myself too much about 
the issue. That was not my responsibility. When blocked 
or defeated in an enterprise I had much at heart, I always 
turned immediately to another field of work where prog- 
ress looked possible, biding my time for a chance to 
resume the obstructed road. An administrator can thus 
avoid waste of energy and a chronic state of disappoint- 
ment and worry. If anyone says that these methods 
require a serene mind or disposition, I can only say that 
it is hard to tell whether the sound nervous system pro- 
duces, or results from, the serenity. Certainly anyone 
who ardently desires to cultivate a calm temperament 
and serenity of spirit would do well to provide himself, 
-if possible, with strong muscles and obedient nerves. 


HOW I HAVE KEPT MY HEALTH 13 


My own experience has led me to think that strenuous 
work, done with interest and zeal, usually promotes 
health and vigor, and 1s seldom injurious if kept within 
the limits set by bodily fatigue. From observation of 
other people I have come to believe that imperfect sleep 
is a sure indication of excessive fatigue or of unwise 
nervous stimulation, and that the best counteracting 
influence is the cautious development of the muscular 
system. 

There are other kinds of strain which are unavoidable 
by thinking people — the strains of disaster affecting 
ourselves or those we love, of sorrow, and of the sight of 
suffering which we cannot relieve. I have seen such 
strains bravely endured by persons of feeble body, and 
I have witnessed in weak or invalided persons striking 
triumphs of the soul over the body ; but in my own case 
it has seemed to me that health and bodily vigor, pre- 
served by a wholesome mode of life, had much to do 
with my endurance of disappointment, grief, and moral 
strain. Although my life as it draws to its close appears 
to have been on the whole successful, it has had at vari- 
ous stages quite the ordinary share of disappointment, 
disaster, and bereavement; and I cannot but believe that 
bodily health and strength were a support in these 
exigencies, and that it is a legitimate motive for trying 
to keep well and strong, that one may be able to meet, 
without being overwhelmed and crushed, the trials and 
losses to which humanity is exposed. 

My experience does not furnish a short, explicit pre- 
scription for keeping health and working power till eighty 


14 A LATE HARVEST 


years of age, probably because many and various causes 
have contributed to the result; but I feel safe in affrm- 
ing that anyone who desires to have a like experience 
will do well to eat moderately, to sleep at least seven 
hours a night with windows open, to take regular exer- 
cise in the open air every day, to use no stimulants, to 
enjoy all the natural delights without excess in any, and 
to keep under all circumstances as serene a spirit as his © 
nature permits. This is the way to win from life the 
maximum of real joy and satisfaction. Does this seem 
a materialistic doctrine? It by no means excludes the 
spiritual influences of abiding love and good-will. 


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GRAPHICAL AND REMINISCENT 


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EPES SARGENT DIXWELL?* 


Wuen I was a pupil in the Boston Latin School, Epes 
Sargent Dixwell was the Headmaster. Mr. Dixwell was 
himself a graduate of the school. His father was Dr. 
John Dixwell, who received the degree of M.D. from 
Harvard University in 1811, and practised in Boston. 
The son, Epes Sargent, entered Harvard College when he 
was not yet sixteen years old, and received the degree of 
Bachelor of Arts in 1827, being fourth scholar in a class 
of forty-four. The third scholar in that class was William 
Augustus Stearns, who like Mr. Dixwell remained an 
ardent scholar all his life, and was President of Amherst 
College for twenty-two years. The second scholar was 
Edmund Lambert Cushing, who became Chief Justice 
of the Supreme Court of New Hampshire. Four places 
below Mr. Dixwell in class rank was Cornelius Conway 
Felton, Professor of Greek and Greek Literature in Har- 
vard University for twenty-eight years, and President of 
the University from 1860 till his death in 1862. The 
class contained several other lifelong scholars who 
attained distinction in the learned professions. 

After graduating from college, Mr. Dixwell was sub- 
master in the Latin School for two years but then turned 
his attention to the study of law, was admitted to the 
Bar in 1833, and practised law for three years. In the 
autumn of 1836 he was chosen Headmaster of the Boston 


1From the Boston Latin School Register, February 1917. 


18 A LATE HARVEST 


Latin School, being then twenty-nine years of age, which 
would seem to the present generation young for such a 
charge. He brought to the position of Headmaster accu- 
rate scholarship, gentle manners, and the proved capac- 
ity for maintaining strict discipline without harshness. 

When I first knew him as Headmaster he was erect in 
carriage, alert in body and mind, and produced on boys 
the effect of a refined but vigorous gentleman. His 
speech was gentle and precise. He was nearsighted, but 
nevertheless seemed to see quite as much as any other 
master in the school — perhaps more. We boys won- 
dered why he took his glasses off when he read; but that 
was his practice, and it remained so till his dying day. 
We sometimes marveled at his dress, which was by no 
means of the ordinary black sort. He would appear at 
five or ten minutes before the hour of opening the school, 
walking briskly through the crowd of boys in the yard, 
in such a costume as this: a rather light-colored over- 
coat, thrown back, a dark purple frock-coat, a green 
velvet waistcoat, and black-and-white checked trousers. 
As my father always wore from morning till night a black 
swallow-tail coat, such as is now used for evening dress, 
and dark trousers, my attention was early directed to 
what seemed to me the peculiarities of Mr. Dixwell’s 
costume. It was not till I was in the first class of the 
School, and consequently in Mr. Dixwell’s room, that 
I ascertained the source of some of these peculiarities. 
Mr. Dixwell was a delightful teacher of Greek and Latin, 
though his real love was Latin. He always endeavored 
to illustrate the lesson of the day with objects of art, or 


EPES SARGENT DIXWELL 1g 


with maps or pictures; and in these ways he called his 
pupils’ attention to the real meaning of the text, and 
often to its elegances and beauties. One day he was 
illustrating the lesson with some colored prints of the 
Roman Forum and its adjacent buildings. Each of these 
prints had on it several different colors designating dis- 
tricts or regions. Mr. Dixwell made no reference in his 
explanations to these different colors; and questions 
from the boys soon developed the fact that they were 
all alike to him. He was color-blind. For students of 
heredity, it is an interesting fact that none of his children 
inherited this physical defect, but that it has reappeared 
in some of his grandchildren. 

At that time, the master in each room opened the 
morning exercises by reading a passage from the Bible 
and offering prayer. AsI passed up the School, I listened 
to these exercises as carried on by five or six different 
masters whose methods at these exercises were different. 
Mr. Dixwell read the Bible simply, reverently, and 
clearly, and would sometimes make a comment as he 
read. I have always remembered a comment he made 
with strong conviction on the first sentence in Genesis: 
“That,” said Mr. Dixwell, ‘‘is the most sublime sentence 
in the English language.” 

In 1851 the City of Boston made a regulation that the 
teachers in its public schools should reside in Boston. 
Now Mr. Dixwell had lived for many years in Cam- 
bridge, and had brought up his family there in a very 
good house with a garden. Moreover, he and his family 
were living there among many congenial neighbors and 


20 A LATE HARVEST 


friends. He therefore resigned his position as Head- 
master of the Public Latin School, and immediately 
opened “‘The Private Latin School,” which he main- 
tained and conducted in Boylston Place for twenty-one 
years. The establishment of this school marks an epoch 
in the development of secondary education in the city 
of Boston. From that date private schools for boys have 
been maintained in Boston, which have been recognized 
as in all respects equal to the Boston Latin School. 
There were, to be sure, two private schools in Boston in 
1844 when my parents had to decide to what secondary 
school I should be sent; but they were not generally 
admitted to be as good schools as the Boston Latin 
School, although their friends firmly believed in them. 
Since 1851, a series of private schools of the first class 
have been created in and about Boston, and have with- 
drawn from the Public Latin Schools many sons of well- 
to-do families. Such schools were, or are, the Hopkinson 
School, the Noble and Greenough School, the Volkmann 
School, the Browne and Nichols School in Cambridge, 
and the Country Day School at Nonantum. The func- 
tion of the Boston Latin School, however, remains of 
high importance. It prepares for admission to a variety 
of colleges — though generally to Harvard College — 
a large number of promising boys drawn from various 
classes and races, most of whom go on after graduation 
at college to the learned professions. 

Mr. Dixwell gave up the Private Latin School in 1872, 
and thereafter lived the quiet life of a scholar, as a peer 
and companion of the many distinguished students who 


EPES SARGENT DIXWELL 21 


were then active as teachers and investigators in the 
University, such as Agassiz, Pierce, Gray, Felton, and 
Wyman. He enjoyed two trips to Europe, and summer 
outings in the mountains or at the seashore. He kept up 
the active use of Latin literature as a means of mental 
delight. One of his diversions was writing English verse 
and translating English poetry into Latin. 

He lived to be ninety-two years of age. Few men 
enjoy so serene an old age, filled with congenial and 
characteristic occupation, domestic joys, and expanding 
interest in the past and the future of human society. 


JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL! 


THE part assigned to me at these commemorative 
exercises is the consideration of Lowell’s career as a 
college professor, his influence on University teaching, 
and his conception of a University’s function in the life 
of a nation. 

Lowell was appointed Smith Professor of the French 
and Spanish languages and literatures and Professor of 
Belles-Lettres in 1855,his only predecessors in that chair 
being George Ticknor, the historian of Spanish litera- 
ture, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, each of whom 
held that professorship for eighteen years. Lowell was 
titular professor on the Abiel Smith endowment for 
thirty-one years, but was absent in Europe for some- 
thing more than ten years out of that period. He had no 
natural inclination toward the work of a teacher ; but he 
welcomed his appointment to the professorship because 
it gave him a small but sure income as a supplement to 
the somewhat unreliable proceeds of his literary labors. 
It was a course of lectures on English literature at the 
Lowell Institute in the winter of 1855 which occasioned 
his election to the Smith professorship. He then for the 
first time appeared formally as a critic and historian of 
literature. Up to that date Lowell would have been most 


1 An address delivered at a celebration of the one-hundredth anni- 
versary of the birth of James Russell Lowell, by the Cambridge 
Historical Society, February 22, 1919. 


JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 23 


correctly described as a man of letters and a rising poet. 

His most important function as Smith Professor was 
from the beginning the delivery of one lecture a week on 
modern literature. He had no fancy for this occupation. 
When he was in Europe in 1855-56, making preparatory 
studies in Germany and Italy, he wrote to a friend about 
getting “‘quietly settled again at Elmwood with the Old 
Man of the Sea of my first course of lectures off my 
shoulders.”’ In September 1856, when he had returned 
to Cambridge, he says, “I have not begun to lecture yet, 
but am to deliver my old Lowell Institute course first, 
and then some on German literature and Dante.” When 
he was thinking to go from Germany into Italy in 
January 1856, he refers to his College appointment 
thus: “It takes me a great while to learn that I have a 
tether round my leg — I who have been used to gallop 
over the prairies at will — and I find myself brought up 
now and then with a sharp jerk that is anything but 
pleasant to the tibia. But I suppose I shall learn to stand 
quietly up to my manger at last.’’ About the same time 
he wrote to another friend, “Yesterday I began my lec- 
tures and came off better than I expected; for I am 
always a great coward beforehand. I 4afe lecturing ; for 
I have discovered (entre nous) that it is almost impossi- 
ble to learn a// about anything, unless indeed it be some 
piece of ill luck, and then one has the help of one’s 
friends, you know.” 

In May 1857, he wrote to his friend Stillman, 
“While my lectures are on my mind I am not myself, 
and I seem to see all the poetry drying out of me.” 


24 A LATE HARVEST 


The delivery of these lectures on modern literature 
once a week remained Lowell’s chief teaching function 
for twenty years; but at intervals he also gave instruc- 
tion in elementary Spanish and Italian, when no instruc- 
tor had been obtained in these languages for the current 
year or term, or when one or more of the teachers of 
these subjects fellill. For example, in 1859-60, the study 
of all modern languages being optional, Lowell taught 
the elements of Spanish and Italian to volunteers three 
times a week for each language. This service must have 
been to him a real affliction and a serious interruption 
of his active work as editor and essayist. In 1860-61, 
there being no instructor in Italian, Professor Lowell 
gave the instruction in that language in the senior year 
to an elective class three times a week. In 1869, Assist- 
ant Professor Cutler being ill, Lowell says: “I am 
shepherding his flocks for him meanwhile — now lead- 
ing them among the sham-classic pastures of Corneille, 
where a colonnade supplies the dearth of herbage; now 
along the sunny broad-viewed uplands of Goethe’s prose. 
It is eleven o’clock and I am just back from my class. At 
four I go down again for two hour$ of German, and at 
half-past seven I begin on two hours of Dante.” 

The last clause is an allusion to Lowell’s evening meet- 
ings with a few advanced students of Italian in his study 
at Elmwood, meetings which were maintained through- 
out most of Lowell’s active service as a professor. There 
he gave a few appreciative students a critical survey of 
Dante’s greatest works, revealing to them the innumer- 
able beauties of the poet’s thought and style, and also 


JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 26 


his teaching of liberty, toleration, and nobler prospects . . 
for mankind. In these intimate meetings Lowell was at 
his best as a teacher, because he was much of the time 
teaching the beauty in the thoughts, phrases, and words 
of a transcendent genius. He illustrated these lessons 
with ideas, words, and phrases drawn from other litera- 
tures, especially from English literature. His own 
memory for choice words and felicitous phrases was 
marvelous; for he remembered not only the words and 
phrases themselves, but the places where he had seen 
them. In the autumn of 1872 I was asking him about 
the word “rote,” then in use among sailors and fisher- 
men on the coast of Maine to indicate the sound of waves 
beating on a rocky shore, not ona pebbly or sandy beach. 
Lowell rose from his chair, climbed to a top shelf in his 
library, took down a small book of the seventeenth cen- 
tury, turned its leaves for a moment, and handed me the 
page on which the word “rote” occurred in precisely the 
sense in which a man born on the island where I had my 
summer camp used'the word, when we were trying to 
cross Frenchman’s Bay in a thick fog. Suddenly he 
shouted to me from the bow, “We ’re just right. I hear 
the rote on Stave Island Thrumbcap.”’ Lowell resumed 
his easy-chair and his pipe, and remarked, “It 1s many 
years since I have had that book in my hand or have 
heard that excellent word.” 

These classes in his library——in sharp contrast 
with his public lectures — were always agreeable to 
Lowell, and delightful to the few students who there 
gathered about an admired and beloved master. 


26 A LATE HARVEST 


Professor Lowell remained the official head of the De- 
partment of Modern Languages from his first appoint- 
ment in 1855 till he began his diplomatic service in 1877; 
but those duties were light and occupied very little of his 
time. In the early years of his service as professor he 
attended with approximate regularity the meetings of 
the College Faculty, particularly during the administra- 
tions of President Walker and President Felton. Thus 
the records of the College Faculty show that he attended 
ninety-two meetings out of one hundred and sixty-one 
between July 1859, and December 1862. This attend- 
ance must have been for him a serious sacrifice; for at 
that time the meetings of the Faculty were held in the 
evening. 

During the greater part of Lowell’s service as a pro- 
fessor he was much occupied with editorial functions 
and in writing for reviews and magazines. He was the 
first editor of the 4tlantic Monthly, and was associated 
with Professor Norton in the editorship of the North 
American Review, and to both these periodicals he con- 
tributed a large number of articles, both political and lit- 
erary. [he two occupations were not inconsistent ; and 
probably each helped in some measure the other. 

His first appointment as a diplomat — President 
Hayes appointed him Minister Resident at the Court 
of Spain in 1877 — was peculiarly appropriate, because 
of his thorough knowledge of the Spanish language and 
literature — a knowledge which his work as a professor 
had made ampler and more exact. 

After 1869-70 the department of modern languages 


JAMES: RUSSELL; LOWELL 27 


was strongly reénforced, and its position in the Univer- 
sity greatly improved; and Professor Lowell was no 
longer called upon for elementary or routine work. 


Lowell’s influence as a university teacher illustrated / 


some of his own fundamental] convictions. He believed 
that language should always be taught primarily as the 
vehicle of beautiful literature, whereas most language 
teachers of that day were using admirable literature as 
means of teaching grammar and philology. He thought 
it much more important for a boy, or a man, to learn to 
appreciate and love the beauty and grace of literature as 
a vehicle of sound philosophy and living truth than to 
become familiar with the genealogy of words or the logic 


of grammar; to enjoy the rhythm and flow of good 


poetry than to study the technique of its metres. The 
spiritual contents or substance of fine literature seemed 
to him much more important than its conventions or 
usages as to forms or derivations. He thought it hard 
and unnecessary that any competent student should be 
obliged to choose between devoting himself to philology 
and accurate linguistic scholarship on the one hand or to 
the real products of poetic and dramatic genius on the 
other. Was there not time for both? He held the opin- 
ion — decidedly heretical in a Harvard professor of his 
time — “that there is neither ancient nor modern on the 
narrow shelves of what is truly literature.” 


Lowell’s conception of the function of a University — 


was always lofty, though subject to some fluctuations of 
opinion as to discipline and scope. He declared that 


28 A LATE HARVEST 


“the fame and usefulness of all institutions of learning 
depend on the greatness of those who teach in them, and 
great teachers are almost rarer than great poets.” 
Further, it was his opinion that Harvard College up to 
the middle of the nineteenth century had had no great 
teachers. It had had many devoted teachers but no 
great ones, capable of inspiring as well as informing and 
guiding youth. He often lamented that Harvard’s 
grounds and buildings had no beauty or charm, and 
commiserated the Cambridge graduates who came over 
with the early immigrations for “the pitiful contrast 
which they must have felt between the carven sanctua- 
ries of learning they had left behind and the wattled fold 
they were rearing here on the edge of the wilderness.” 
Another indispensable equipment of a University was 
manifestly books; and in this respect he thought that 
the College, and the New England ministers and teachers 
bred at the College, fared pretty well during the first two 
hundred years. He himself, growing up in the first half 
of the nineteenth century at and near Harvard College, 
had, he thought, no great teacher, but many good books. 

If the intellectual and esthetic resources of the College 
during the first two hundred years were but scanty in his 
view, he did not fail to perceive that the College supplied 
the greater part of New England with teachers and min- 
isters who were wise leaders in communities of which 
Lowell himself could say, “‘in civic virtue, intelligence, 
and general efficacy I seek a parallel in vain.” “This,” 
he declares concerning the Harvard human product, in 
his address at the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary 


JAMES RUSSELL: LOWELL 29 


(1886) of the foundation of Harvard College, “was the 
stuff out of which fortunate ancestors are made, and 
twenty-five years ago their sons showed in no diminished 
measure the qualities of the breed.” Those sons have 
now in their turn been the progenitors of a valid race, 
as the services of Harvard’s sons in the recent Great 
War loudly proclaim. In the first four lines of the second 
stanza of Lowell’s immortal Ode, recited at the Harvard 
Commemoration in July 1865, he exalts the teachings 
of Harvard College through: six generations, and the 
fruitage of those teachings : — 
Today our Reverend Mother welcomes back 
Her wisest scholars, those who understood 


The deeper teaching of her mystic tome, 
And offered their fresh lives to make it good. 


When President James Walker, about 1856, asked 


Lowell what his notion of a university was, he answered, ” 


“‘A university is a place where nothing useful is taught ; 
but a university is possible only where a man may get 
his livelihood by digging Sanskrit roots.” In his admir- 
able oration at Harvard’s two hundred and fiftieth anni- 
versary he explains what he meant by that somewhat 
cryptic statement. “What I meant was that the highest 
office of the somewhat complex thing so named (a 
university) was to distribute the true bread of life, the 
pane degli angeli, as Dante called it, and to breed an 
appetite for it; but that it should also have the means 
and appliances for teaching everything.” 


Although Lowell was a delighted observer of trees, 


flowers, birds, and landscape, and thoroughly under- 


30 A LATE HARVEST 


stood the play of the human imagination in poetry, 
drama, and the fine arts, his education and experience 
left him at sixty years without even an elementary train- 
ing in any exact science, and without knowledge of the 
great part played by the imagination in scientific re- 
search, or perception of the oneness or identity of modern 
methods of advancing knowledge in all fields of inquiry. 
These personal limitations considered, how splendid is 
this conception of the function of a university : — 


Let the Humanities be maintained undiminished in their 
ancient right. Leave in their traditional preéminence those 
arts that were rightly called liberal; those studies that kindle 
the imagination, and through it irradiate the reason; those 
studies that manumitted the modern mind; those in which the 
brains of finest temper have found alike their stimulus and 
their repose, taught by them that the power of intellect is 
heightened in proportion as it is made gracious by measure 
and symmetry. Give us Science, too, but give first of all, and 
last of all, the science that ennobles life and makes it generous. 


Although Lowell says of himself that he was “‘ by tem- 
perament and education of a conservative turn,” he was 
all his life a stout believer in democracy of the town- 
meeting sort; but he sometimes had qualms about its 
tendency to materialism, and its slowness in the cen- 
turial process of developing civilization. How high his 
standards for democracy were appears in the following 
passage from his Harvard anniversary address : — 


Democracy must show its capacity for producing not a 
higher average man, but the highest possible types of man- 
hood in all its manifold varieties, or it is a failure. No matter 


JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL eu 


what it does for the body, if it do not in some sort satisfy that 
inextinguishable passion of the soul for something that lifts 
life away from prose, from the common and the vulgar, it is a 
failure. Unless it know how to make itself gracious and win- 
ning, it is a failure. Has it done this? Is it doing this? Or 
trying to doit? 


These words suggest the reasons why democracies 
must have universities. 


OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 1 


My real acquaintance with Dr. Holmes began in 1869 
when I entered with the Medical Faculty on the discus- 
sion of certain rather radical changes in the Harvard 
Medical School. Dr. Holmes, having been Dean of the 
School from 1847 to 1853 and Parkman Professor of 
anatomy and physiology since 1847, was an important 
member of the Faculty. Of course, before I met him in 
the Medical Faculty I had regarded him chiefly as an 
author. I had read his exquisite ‘The Chambered Nau- 
tilus,” his hymn, “‘Lord of all being, throned afar,” and 
others equally beautiful, and The Autocrat of the Break- 
fast Table, and had often heard him make amusing 
speeches or read delightful verses at College celebra- 
tions. Moreover, I often saw him at King’s Chapel, the 
Unitarian church where I went as a boy with my parents. 
My conception of Dr. Holmes was not that of a lecturer 
on any medical subject, or of a scientific investigator in 
either anatomy or physiology. Dr. Holmes had not prac- 
tised medicine. He never set himself to the practice of 
medicine in Boston, although his education as a physi- 
cian had been long and thorough. Why, then, was he 
given the important professorship of anatomy and phys- 
iology in the Medical Faculty? I suppose it was the 


1From the Harvard Graduates’ Magazine, June 1923: a revised 
stenographic report of an address to the Harvard Medical Society at 
the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, November 16, 1920. 


OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES a8 


opinion of the managers of the School at that time 
(1847) that some vivacity and interest were much needed 
in the thirty lectures a week which were then adminis- 
tered to the hapless medical students. You can hardly \ 
imagine how dull, how unintelligent, indeed, was the | 
system of instruction in the Medical School before 1870. | 
The same lectures were given every year from November 
to March before the whole body of students. There was 
no division of subjects among two or more years, and no 
progressive programme. 

I happened to make the acquaintance of the Medical 
School as early as 1856. In October of that year Pro- 
fessor Josiah P. Cooke, who had for several years given 
the course of lectures on chemistry to medical students, 
as well as all the instruction in chemistry which under- 
graduates in Harvard College then received, and had 
equipped his laboratories at both places at his own ex- 
pense or his father’s, got into a lively altercation with 
the Medical Faculty about their practice of giving the 
degree of M.D. on slight oral examinations to any can- 
didate who passed in five subjects out of nine. At the 
end of the altercation Professor Cooke resigned his place 
in the Medical Faculty, told them he should not lecture 
again in the School, ripped out of his laboratory at the 
School the furnaces and other fixtures he had put in 
there, and carted them and all the rest of the equipment 
out to Cambridge. The medical session was to open in 
a few days. The Faculty sent a protest to the Corpora- 
tion; and the Corporation suggested to Professor Cooke 
that he give, or provide for, the course in chemistry at 


34 A LATE HARVEST 


the Medical School which had been announced for the 
session of 1856-57. Professor Cooke felt on reflection 
that he had been somewhat precipitate; so he accepted 
the suggestion of the Corporation. 

By favor of Professor Cooke I had been studying 
chemistry in his private laboratory at Cambridge since 
January 1850— the only undergraduate in Harvard 
College who had that privilege — and he was my master 
in that subject. When I became a tutor in mathematics 
in 1854, I went on with my chemical studies under Pro- 
fessor Cooke; and in 1856 was carrying on some chem- 
ical researches in his laboratory and under his guidance. 
Accordingly, when he asked me to give the course in the 
Medical School for him, saying that he would send in 
from Cambridge all the laboratory furniture I should 
need and all the chemical apparatus which would be 
needed to illustrate my lectures, I had to do what he 
wished me to; although I knew that it was a perilous 
adventure for me who had never given a chemical lecture 
in my life, and indeed had never taught chemistry at all. 
While giving that course of lectures, I made thorough 
acquaintance with the methods of teaching which then 
prevailed in the Medical School, with the low quality of 
the majority of the medical students, and the high 
quality of the select few who paid little attention to the 
four months of lectures, but close attention to the dis- 
secting-room, the autopsies, and the clinical opportuni- 
ties afforded them by the hospitals and their private pre- 
ceptors. In the lectures of the regular medical session 
there was no questioning between teacher and students, 


OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 35 


no interruption whatever to the flow of dull reading 
which came from the professor’s mouth. Most of the 
professors gave the same lectures year after year from 
the same manuscript. I remember seeing on two occa- 
sions the condition of the paper of the manuscript lectures 
which Dr. Jacob Bigelow read every year to the medical 
class. The paper was brownish-yellow, although it had 
once been white. Dr. Jacob Bigelow was a great man in 
American medicine and was a lifelong student of botany 
and its applications; but in his hands the subject of ma- 
teria medica underwent no change to speak of between 
1815 and 1855. Even the extemporaneous lectures of 
Dr. Jacob Bigelow’s son Henry on the practice of sur- 
gery and on venereal disease became strongly repetitive 
from year to year, when Professor Henry J. Bigelow 
spent a large sum of money on admirable pictures of 
operations and treatments, and used them year after 
year in his regular lecture course. Dr. Holmes, on the 
other hand, although he lectured without notes and with 
remarkable vivacity, illustrated his lectures not only 
with diagrams, prints, and engravings brought from his 
own library, and specimens brought from the Warren 
Museum, but chiefly with dissections of the cadaver 
made beforehand by the demonstrator of anatomy with 
the utmost care, and exhibited and described before the 
class with enthusiasm by Dr. Holmes. His standard for 
dissections being high, the successive demonstrators re- 
ceived a very precious training in this service. 

For the greater part of the year the medical student 
was supposed to be under the direction of some active 


36 A LATE HARVEST 


practitioner; but he could acquire knowledge and skill 
only very slowly from the average practitioner ; hence a 
local improvement in Boston in the conduct of medical 
education. In 1869-70 two out-of-session schools were 
in existence in Boston for giving some systematic in- 
struction to medical students when the Harvard Medical 
School was not in session. These schools were conducted 
by two groups of practitioners living in Boston or the 
vicinity, men who were fond of teaching and were will- 
ing to put time and strength into these schools at pecu- 
niary sacrifice. Every teacher, however,.had a share in 
the total of the fees paid to the group, the expenditures 
for rent and equipment being kept very low. One or two 
of the best teachers in these out-of-session schools were 
from time to time taken into the Harvard Medical 
Faculty. There was ample time for the work of these 
supplementary schools, for the regular session of the 
Harvard Medical School only lasted about four months 
in the year. 

Dr. Holmes was a very interesting member of the 
Medical Faculty. He was quick in repartee; he liked 
to say some witty thing in debate — generally comical 
or pleasant, but sometimes having a sharp point. The 
President was a novel member of the Medical Faculty. 
No President of Harvard had ever attended the meet- 
ings of the Medical Faculty before. At the first meeting 
I went to, the professor who at that time controlled the 
whole of the Medical School — Professor Henry J. Bige- 
low — exhibited distinct surprise when I walked into the 
room; and hewasnever reconciled to my.presence. That 


OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 37 


year, 1869-70, we had a very rapid series of meetings of 
the Faculty. In fact, for a time we met once a week, 
which was unheard of; and new proposal after proposal 
came before the Faculty for discussion—discussion only, 
action being delayed; and the interchange of views in 
the Faculty became more and more interesting to me — 
intensely interesting. I found that certain members of 
the Faculty were resolutely opposed to any change what- 
ever in the policies and programmes of the School, and 
particularly to the institution of a two years’ course or 
a three years’ course of progressive studies. Soon I saw 
the Faculty divide itself into two parts: one intensely 
conservative, the other open to suggestion and change, 
some of them looking for progress. Now, Dr. Holmes 
was an extreme conservative for about four months, 
during which this debate went on. At last, one night he 
voted against Dr. Bigelow, who was advocating stand- 
ing still in all respects, to my great surprise and to Dr. 
Bigelow’s greater. The Faculty soon adjourned. At that 
time the Faculty met at the house of the Dean, Dr. Cal- 
vin Ellis. As I was standing by the centre table in the 
parlor Dr. Holmes came up to me and said, “Mr. Presi- 
dent, you have undoubtedly seen what is the matter 
with me.” I could not say that I had. Screwing the ball 
of his thumb round on the top of the table, Dr. Holmes 
went on: “I have been under Dr. Bigelow’s thumb so 
long, that I have not been able to get out from under.” 
From that moment Dr. Holmes voted steadily for im- 
provementsin the School. He brought to the discussions 
thereafter a wit and playfulness which were infinitely 


38 A LATE HARVEST 


helpful. He seemed to take special pleasure in provok- 
ing the conservatives, and always with amusement on 
everybody's part. 

A year later I came to know Dr. Holmes still better, 
because I met him not only at the meetings of the Medi- 
cal Faculty, but in an interesting dining-club in Boston 
to which we both resorted. In both the discussions at 
the Medical Faculty and the conversations at the Satur- 
day Club I learned to admire greatly the fundamental 
kindliness of his nature and the breadth of his interests. 
Then he was simple-hearted in a charming way, with 
a sort of natural vanity which he expressed without re- 
serve. I was sitting beside him one day at the Club when 
I mentioned that I had just parted with an Englishman 
who had spoken of him with great reverence and admi- 
ration. Dr. Holmes inquired instantly, ‘‘What did he 
say? What did he say, Mr. President? You know I 
like to have it laid on thick.” This simplicity was a 
delightful trait. 

He had, in as high a degree as any man I have talked 
with, a love of beautiful expression and clear thought. 
The thought must be clear, but also it must be in a 
beautiful form. His conversation was not only highly 
amusing or entertaining ; but it was also very instructive 
because of this clear expression of useful thought. He 
was quick as a flash in conversation, not only with repar- 
tee but with quick comment on the thought which 
somebody else had just expressed. 

You know that in those days a professor in the Medi- 
cal School was pretty apt to be called upon to teach 


OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 39 


several subjects. To our generation, to your generation, 
it seems enough for a medical professor to teach one sub- 
ject or even a part of one subject; but Dr. Holmes was 
required to teach both anatomy and physiology. Indeed, 
he spoke of his professorship as not a chair but a settee. 
Anatomy and physiology did not wholly describe the 
variety of the subjects he undertook. He was the first 
man in the medical schools of the country, to the best of 
my knowledge and belief, to imagine making every med- 
ical student learn the use of the simple microscope and 
to get practice in its use. There he started a movement 
in medical education which has gone far to-day, very 
far. Indeed, the skillful use of the microscope might be 
said to be the foundation of modern medicine in many 
different fields. 

What an important discovery was Dr. Holmes’s 
demonstration of the contagiousness of puerperal fever, 
and of its being carried by the physician from one woman 
to another, or to several others in the same day. We can 
hardly imagine what courage it took for Dr. Holmes to 
publish that discovery. In the first place, he was not 
himself a practitioner, and never had been. What could 
he know about the proper treatment of puerperal fever, 
and how could he know that it was carried from one 
woman to another by the physician? Dr. Holmes’s cam- 
paign on that subject was carried on with great boldness. 
He reported publicly, but in proper places of course, that 
such and such physicians, naming them, had carried 
puerperal fever from one patient to another, with dates 
given, and the number of patients that the said doctors 


40 A LATE HARVEST 


had lost. It happened that several of the physicians he 
named lived in Philadelphia. A shout of derision and 
wrath went up from medical practitioners all about the 
country. What was this ignorant person who had never 
practised medicine saying to the detriment of eminent 
practitioners and the medical profession? How foolish 
the charge, preposterous indeed! My high respect for 
Dr. Holmes as a man capable of exact observing and 
recording and then of putting together a coherent and 
convincing argument, dates from my reading of that 
fight in which Dr. Holmes so gallantly engaged. He was 
not at the time clearly successful in the unequal combat. 
It remained doubtful whether he had convinced any con- 
siderable number of physicians that they should not go 
from a case of puerperal fever to another woman in con- 
finement. The practical issue remained long in doubt. 
But Dr. Holmes had this singular felicity, and it was 
indeed a great happiness for him — he lived to see the 
absolute demonstration of the carrying of puerperal fever 
from one woman to another woman in confinement. He 
lived to see the demonstration, through bacteriology, of 
the way in which communication was made from one 
sick woman to another. It all came out long before Dr. 
Holmes died, and he saw and appreciated the demon- 
stration. Few men of science, ] fear, have had that felic- 
ity ; a few have had it, but many a man of science who 
has discovered some bit of truth has not lived to see the 
acceptance of it. We may look back on Dr. Holmes’s 
experience in this respect as an experience satisfactory 
not only to him but to everybody who likes to see a good 


OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 41 


work fulfilled, rounded out, and carried beyond all stages 
of doubt. 

It is impossible to give, I fear, a correct impression of 
Dr. Holmes’s vivacity and quickness of thought. His 
conversation was the best part of him, better than his 
writing. Why was this? In the first place, I suppose it 
was because his mind was stored with literary or artistic 
forms of expression — with a multitude of sayings of 
great insight and penetration. In the next place, he in- 
vented such expressions with extreme rapidity. And 
then he delighted in the kind of conflict that comes in 
rapid conversation and quick exchange of ideas. He was 
very much stimulated by askillful opponent formidable 
for his vigor, inventiveness, and keenness. 

Why has it seemed to some of your teachers desirable 
that I should testify to what I saw of Dr. Holmes? I 
suppose, in the first place, because Dr. Holmes’s own 
achievements as a medical teacher were so great. He 
had such foresight as to what was coming. Nobody sup- 
posed that he had; but he had. For instance, he offered 
to the whole medical class the beginnings of that teach- 
ing of anatomy which became established twenty-five to 
thirty years later. He saw that we were going to study 
microscopic anatomy, and that microscopic study was 
going to prove in all probability the most valuable part 
of the study of anatomy. It was years and years be- 
fore — in the strong American medical schools — histol- 
ogy really took the place that Dr. Holmes predicted for 
it. It took another generation than his and another great 
teacher to establish in the Harvard Medical School what 


42 A LATE HARVEST 


we now understand by the teaching of anatomy, not only 
in the gross but in the microscopic conditions. 

I want to say a few words about two other professors 
in the Medical Faculty of 1869-70, because they, too, 
deserved to be gratefully remembered by lovers of the 
Harvard Medical School and of the medical profession. 

I wish to speak first of Dr. John Barnard Swett Jack- 
son, then Shattuck Professor of Morbid Anatomy, in the 
nomenclature of the day, but who had previously borne 
the title of Professor of Pathological Anatomy. He had 
long been the Curator of the Warren Museum, which he 
greatly enriched with specimens derived from the numer- 
ous post-mortem examinations which he himself made 
in Boston and the vicinity. I noticed that Dr. Jackson 
said but little at the Faculty discussions, but never 
missed a meeting, and seemed interested and watchful. 
One night he tarried a little after the adjournment of the 
meeting to say to me privately: “Mr. President, I go 
only by the gross appearances; I know nothing about 
the microscope; I cannot use one. The instruction in 
anatomy, both normal and morbid, in the Harvard 
MedicalSchool must beimproved.” After that I counted 
on Dr. Jackson’s support for every reform proposed for 
the Medical School. It never failed. He voted all winter 
for every step toward raising the standards of the School, 
improving the instruction, the examinations for admis- 
sion, and the examinations for the degree. It was a great 
encouragement to the young President and the junior 
members of the Faculty to find this elderly, old-fash- 
ioned, medical teacher and investigator supporting every 


OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 43 


proposal for improvement in the School, however novel 
or pecuniarily risky. 

There was another admirable professor in the Faculty 
of 1869-70, Calvin Ellis, who had just been made Dean 
of the Faculty by Dr. Henry J. Bigelow, acting under 
serious misapprehension concerning Dr. Ellis’s quality. 
Dr. Bigelow thought Dr. Ellis a dull man, from whom 
the School could never get much, although he had made 
some pretty good observations on the chest, and the uses 
of auscultation. Dr. Bigelow said frankly : ““Hecan keep 
the records of the students, and he can get out the an- 
nouncements and advertisements, and deal with pe- 
titions and complaints. In short, he can do the work of 
a Dean, which is chiefly clerical and mechanical.’”’ Dr. 
Ellis supported every improvement that was suggested 
in the methods of the Medical School, supported it from 
beginning toend, and when it was enacted took an active 
part in putting the improvement into operation. He was 
a man of singular integrity and courage, whose first im- 
pulse was to resist and remedy any evil he saw at work 
in his vicinity. When he saw an evil he did his best to 
cure and remedy it, and get rid of it. He was also an 
extremely persistent person. He remained Dean until 
1883, thus carrying the new School through its most 
critical years to safety and success. 

Two of the three “adjunct” professors who were 
members of the Faculty in 1869-70, Dr. David W. 
Cheever and Dr. James C. White, were earnest advo- 
cates of the new measures. The title, adjunct professor, 
has long since ceased to be used. In those days the 


a A LATE HARVEST 


adjunct professor was to teach exactly what the chief 
professor allowed him to teach, or told him to teach; and 
if for any reason it was not convenient for the professor 
to deliver his announced lecture on the given day, the 
adjunct professor was to go and deliver the lecture, the 
subject being probably handed to him by the chief pro- 
fessor that morning without any adequate time for prep- 
aration. Moreover, if the head professor went out of 
office, the adjunct professor went out, too. It 1s easy to 
see why adjunct professors in the Medical Faculty of 
1869-70 were prepared for large administrative changes 


in the Medical School. 


But I must not take any more of your time. I was 
asked to speak about Dr. Holmes; but I have not been 
able to avoid telling you about the changes in the Medi- 
cal School from ’69 to ’82, in which Dr. Holmes bore so 
good a part, and in which other men, dear to their con- 
temporaries and dear to the stidents of that day, took 
happy and successful part. 

Years after, Dr. Holmes liked to tell how he had not 
seen his way at first to vote for the young President’s 
suggested improvements in the Medical School, but with 
what delight he had later supported them. It was one of 
the happy memories of his fortunate life. 


LANGDELL AND THE LAW SCHOOL } 


WHEN, in conversation, I first proposed to Mr. C. C. 
Langdell of the New York Bar that he become the Dane 
Professor in the Harvard Law School, I saw that the 
proposal attracted him strongly. He apparently wished 
to teach law rather than practise it, but to teach it ina 
new way. He called my attention to the obvious fact 
that he was a new kind of candidate for a professorship 
in the Harvard Law School, and expressed a good deal 
of doubt as to whether he could be elected. He was right 
in both respects ; but clearly he had in mind some reform 
in legal education, some reconstruction of the Law 
School, which I much wished to hear about, having some 
visions of my own about educational reform. He was 
distinctly attracted by the fact that it was the Dane 
professorship that was vacant, the professorship which 
Nathan Dane, eminent lawyer, legal author, and poli- 
ticlan had founded by the gift of ten thousand dollars in 
1829, and which Joseph Story had held for sixteen years 
thereafter. It was Dane, too, who in 1832 provided the 
growing school with an adequate building for the accom- 
modation of its students and its library. When Dane 
founded his professorship, he provided that the lectures 
delivered on the foundation should be published. This 
provision Langdell thought a very wise one, and it ac- 
corded with his own purposes and anticipations. On 


1 From the Harvard Law Review, February 1920. 


46 A LATE HARVEST 


the whole, my proposal fell in with Langdell’s views 
of life, and he soon accepted the risks of the unusual 
candidature. 

The Corporation consented, though with some reluc- 
tance, to elect Mr. Langdell Dane Professor, probably 
out of some general purpose to support their young 
President — all the members of the Board were old 
enough to be my father — whom they had placed in a 
difficult position in spite of much public and private 
criticism. The Board of Overseers in their turn con- 
sented to the election, but with even more reluctance, 
which was overcome mainly by the testimony of James 
C. Carter and Joseph H. Choate of the New York Bar 
to the effect that Langdell was a man of prodigious 
learning in the law and of remarkable industry, and that 
he had a legal mind of extraordinary acumen and 
sagacity. 

The next step was to make him Dean of the School. A 
new statute required that the Faculty of each profes- 
sionalschoolshouldelect from among its members a dean, 
whose duty it should be to keep the records of the 
Faculty and prepare its business. At the Faculty meet- 
ing called for this purpose there were present President 
Eliot, Professor Washburn, who had been for fourteen 
years one of the three professors who really managed the 
School, Professor Nathaniel Holmes, who had been a 
professor in the School for only two years and had never 
taken any active part in its administration, and the new 
Dane Professor. So far as can now be ascertained, there 
never had been any Faculty meeting in the Law School 


LANGDELL AND THE LAW SCHOOL 47 


with a record of proceedings. Professor Washburn testi- 
fied that he had never heard of one. The intervention of 
the President in any Law School proceedings was also 
unexampled. A few months after I entered on the duties 
of President, I stepped into Professor Washburn’s office 
in Dane Hall to ask him some question about the state 
of the School. At sight of me Professor Washburn held 
up both hands and exclaimed, “This is the first time I 
have ever seen a President of the University in this 
building.” Presidents Kirkland and Quincy took some 
interest in the Law School because of their warm friend- 
ship for Judge Story ; but no subsequent President and 
no earlier one had manifested an interest in the School. 
The meeting was rather an awkward one. The President 
stated its object — to elect a Dean. Now deans were 
rather recent creations in Harvard University. The 
Medical School had had a Dean since 1864; but his chief 
function was friendly and charitable intercourse with 
the students. Professor Gurney had just been appointed 
Dean of the College Faculty ; but the nature of his func- 
tions and influence was not yet visible. Whether the 
functions of the Dean of the Law School were to be 
chiefly clerical and eleemosynary or not was not clear to 
Professors Washburn and Holmes; but at any rate 
neither of them desired the office. The only candidate 
seemed to be Professor Langdell, who had only just come 
to the School; but Professor Langdell himself said noth- 
ing. Professor Washburn, after explaining his complete 
ignorance of such matters, moved that Professor Lang- 
dell be elected Dean. This motion was carried by the 


48 A LATE HARVEST 


votes of Professors Washburn and Holmes, Professor 
Langdell not voting. Then began in 1870 a process of 
conservative experimentation and construction in the 
Law School which is not yet finished. The phrase in the 
new statute, that the Dean should “prepare the busi- 
ness of the Faculty,” gave the new Dean all the powers 
he needed. 

The first subject Dean Langdell was called upon to 
deal with was the construction of a new curriculum for 
the School, divided into first- and second-year courses. 
To fill out this new programme required some additional 
courses, which the President and the Dean cooperated 
to procure. A similar reform was going on in the Medi- 
cal School for like reasons. For three years the needed 
enlargement was procured by appointing eminent law- 
yers at the bar or on the bench to give instruction on 
special subjects in relatively short courses. Eight such 
lecturers were appointed during the first three years of 
the new régime, of whom three, Messrs. Bradley, Gray, 
and O. W. Holmes afterward became regular professors. 
Professor Langdell was distrustful of this method of in- 
creasing the instruction in the School, because he held 
that the fact that a man had become a distinguished 
lawyer or a respected judge did not prove that he knew 
how to teach law, or indeed that he could learn to teach 
law. He was inclined to believe that success at the Bar 
or on the Bench was,in all probability, a disqualification 
for the functions of a professor of law. He cordially as- 
sented, however, to the appointment of Messrs. Gray 
and Holmes, because he thought them genuine scholars 


LANGDELL AND THE LAW SCHOOL = 49 


in the law, capable both of discriminating research and 
of accurate exposition. President Eliot had seen at the 
Medical School that a distinguished practitioner of medi- 
cine or surgery might easily prove to be a poor teacher, 
although he might continuously interest medical stu- 
dents as an example of professional success. In the Law 
School he thought it prudent to provide for a few years 
the best possible examples of the old-fashioned method 
of teaching law, partly to break the force of the flood of 
criticism which was pouring in from members of the 
American Bar, but chiefly that the good students in the 
School might have the best possible opportunity to 
compare the old method with the new. 

Professor Langdell’s views concerning teachers of law 
received a striking illustration when in 1873-74 James 
Barr Ames, a recent graduate of the School, who had 
had no experience in practice, was appointed Assistant 
Professor of Law. Both the Corporation and the Over- 
seers consented to this appointment with reluctance; 
and in all probability their consent was given only be- 
cause the appointment was one limited by statute toa 
term of five years. The President was prepared to sup- 
port Dean Langdell in this bold adventure, because he 
had already seen that there were parts of professional 
teaching which young men could do better than old men, 
even though the young men had had but little profes- 
sional experience. Before the expiration of the five years 
Mr. Ames was appointed full Professor of Law with 
general approbation, so conspicuous was his success. 

As soon as Dean Langdell had completed his reorgan- 


50 A LATE HARVEST 


ization of the courses of study in the Law School, and 
put into operation his progressive programme covering 
two years, he turned his attention to the condition of the 
School’s library, and set about, first, providing protec- 
tion and safe management for the library, and, secondly, 
enlarging it. Langdell knew well the lack of supervision 
of the library before 1870. He had been himself its 
student-librarian for several years. He had himself used 
the books of the library with complete freedom, especially 
in the preparation of his valuable notes to Parsons on 
Contracts. He knew what extensive losses and damages 
the library had suffered because of the lack of super- 
vision and the carelessness of the students. He regarded 
a well-selected, well-kept, and ample library as the one 
essential piece of apparatus for any law school, and 
especially for the Harvard Law School he hoped for. It 
had been the practice of the School to supply all the 
students gratuitously with copies of the textbooks they 
used. To abolish this costly practice was one of Lang- 
dell’s first measures. He soon procured the services of a 
permanent librarian, who should be in constant attend- 
ance in the library. These measures for the protection 
and better ordering of the library were taken within a 
few months of Langdell’s becoming Dean; but it was 
not till 1873, when Mr. John Hines Arnold became 
librarian, that the future of the Law School library 
conducted on Langdell’s principles was assured. 

As the case system came into use, another principle 
with regard to the conduct of the library had to be often 
applied. Duplicates had to be supplied of reports and 


LANGDELL AND THE LAW SCHOOL SI 


other books which were in frequent demand. With a 
special appropriation made by the Corporation much 
was done during the year 1870-71 toimprove the fittings 
of the room occupied by the library, to repair the bind- 
ings, and fill the numerous gaps in the series of important 
reports which the School had acquired during its first 
fifty years. When Mr. Arnold became librarian in 1873 
the librarian and the Dean worked together in perfect 
harmony, and indeed in the same spirit ; and both lived 
to see the library increase greatly in number of volumes, 
serviceableness to the students and teachers, and ~ 
pecuniary value. 

To Professor Langdell books had a kind of sacrosanct 
character. They were to be handled carefully, preserved 
from dust and heat, and never defaced by pencil marks 
or words written on the margins of the pages. Mr. 
Arnold shared these sentiments of the Dean, especially 
in regard to books which had been obtained at high cost 
and could not certainly be replaced. These feelings were 
very much injured when certain teachers in the Law 
School, who were writing books, contracted the habit of 
sending books direct from the School library to one of 
the Cambridge printing-offices, in order that the type 
might be set directly from the printed book, instead of 
from copies of the passages the authors proposed to use. 
Inevitably the books came back to the library with some 
of their pages defaced with black finger-marks and other 
smooches, and in some instances with pages torn. This 
state of things being reported by the librarian to the 
Dean, the Dean made some mild suggestions that the 


52 A LATE HARVEST 


offending authors do as he had done — have passages 
they wished to quote copied. When he found that this 
proposition was regarded by the offenders as unreason- 
able and was wholly ineffectual, he came to the Presi- 
dent’s office one morning with a grave aspect indeed, 
and in his official capacity requested my aid. He re- 
gretted the necessity of asking me to intervene; but the 
evil was intolerable. I had some difficulty in convincing 
the offenders that the Dean was right, and that his 
request should be respected. This is the only instance 
I can recall in which Dean Langdell procured the en- 
forcement of his wishes by an exercise of the President’s 
authority. In general, he eagerly desired to convince his 
associates and his students by argument that his way 
of looking at measures or doctrines was right or sound. 

The instructive story of the success of Professor 
Langdell’s method of teaching law has been well told by 
competent witnesses in the Centennial History of the 
Harvard Law School. Professor Langdell and I waited 
patiently, but anxiously, for the verdict. The number 
of students declined more than either of us had ex- 
pected, and the demonstration of success achieved in 
prominent law offices and in practice by graduates of 
the School, who had enjoyed Langdell’s system and 
thoroughly utilized it, came more slowly than we had 
anticipated. On the other hand, that demonstration, 
when it came, was accepted by the legal profession with 
surprising readiness. 

Other restrictive measures, such as the requirement 
for admission to the School of the degree of Bachelor of 


LANGDELL AND THE LAW SCHOOL 53 


Arts or its equivalent, had to be postponed somewhat, 
but not for long. Dean Langdell thought that English 
and American law should be studied by itself without 
admixture of other subjects, such as government, eco- 
nomics, international law, or Roman law; but he also 
wanted every law student to have had a preliminary 
training in a good secondary school and a good college. 
When Professor Ames wished to include in the purchases 
for the library many books on Roman law, Dean Lang- 
dell acquiesced reluctantly, but was ultimately con- 
vinced that a great law library should include even that 
somewhat remote or detached subject. 

During this long struggle with adverse circumstances, 
and especially with severe criticism of the case method 
and its results, Dean Langdell never cared to defend 
himself in print or by public speech. He knew that there 
was only one way to refute criticism, namely, to exhibit 
the professional success of his disciples. His silence did 
not mean lack of confidence in his method; far from it. 
Even when the failure of his eyesight compelled him to 
modify his method in his own classroom, he remained 
sure of the superiority of his original case-method to any 
other, although he could no longer use it successfully 
himself. 

Professor Langdell had, I think, no acquaintance with 
the educational theories or practices of Froebel, Pesta- 
lozzi, Seguin, and Montessori; yet his method was a 
direct application to intelligent and well-trained adults 
of some of their methods for children and defectives. He 
tried to make his students use their own minds logically 


54 A LATE HARVEST 


on given facts, and then to state their reasoning and con- 
clusions correctly in the classroom. He led them to exact 
reasoning and exposition by first setting an example 
himself, and then giving them abundant opportunities 
for putting their own minds into vigorous action, in 
order, first, that they might gain mental power, and, 
secondly, that they might hold firmly the information 
or knowledge they had acquired. It was a strong case of 
education by drawing out from each individual student 
mental activity of a very strenuous and informing kind. 
The elementary and secondary schools of the United 
States are only just beginning to adopt on a large scale 
this method of education—a method which is not 
passive but intensely active, not mainly an absorption 
from either book or teacher but primarily a constant 
giving-forth. Professor Langdell’s method resembled 
the laboratory method of teaching physical science, 
although he believed that the only laboratory the Law 
School needed was a library of printed books. His case 
system has been widely applied in this country to the 
teaching of clinical medicine and surgery, as a useful 
addition to the ordinary practice of teaching those sub- 
jects at the bedside of actual patients. The combination 
he used of the lecture and the recitation is capable of 
wide application in both primary and secondary schools 
and in colleges and universities. Indeed, the conference 
method used with small advanced groups in universi- 
ties is an earlier example of his method, the merits of 
which have been recognized for at least a century 
wherever such groups have existed. 


LANGDELL AND THE LAW SCHOOL 55 


Langdell’s disposition or character was singularly 
honest, just, candid, and serene; although he was also 
capable of indignation, quick and evanescent, or slow- 
gathering and persistent. He was a curious mixture of 
the conservative and the radical, having the merits of 
both. His relation to his wife — who was much younger 
than himself — and to her mother was so delicate and 
tender that it was a high privilege to witness it. About 
his own affairs he was reticent or reserved. Cut off in 
youth and manhood from the amusements and relaxa- 
tions of most educated men, he took pleasure in the care- 
ful investment of his savings, as soon as he could make 
any. I was one of the few persons with whom he some- 
times discussed investments, although he soon learned 
that, compared with him, I knew little about the sub- 
ject. I heard from him something about farm mortgages 
in Iowa and other fertile western states. I found he held 
strong opinions about the security of the mortgage 
bonds of certain western railroads, and the insecurity 
of others, and that he enjoyed the careful researches 
which led him to these opinions. Such studies, however, 
were only the byplay of his mind. He was as successful 
there as he was in his other mental work; so that he left 
an estate whose amount surprised all his friends. He 
was as sagacious and far-seeing in this his sport as he 
was in his serious labors. 

A striking characteristic of Professor Langdell was 
courage, both physical and moral. His moral courage 
was perfectly illustrated by his acceptance of the Dane 
professorship and his whole conduct as Dean of the Law 


56 A LATE HARVEST 


School. His physical courage was illustrated by his 
going about alone on foot by day and by night in the 
streets of Cambridge, when he could see hardly any- 
thing, especially in the glare of bright sunshine. His 
daily walks between Austin Hall and his house were 
terrifying to onlookers, particularly after the advent of 
the automobile, but never to him. He would wait to 
cross the streets till his ears assured him that no horse or 
horse vehicle was very near; but his ears could not warn 
him in time of the rapid approach of a quiet automobile. 
Then he had to trust that the chauffeurs would see that 
a blind man was crossing the broad street. For several 
years he was quite unable to go alone on an unfamiliar 
path. This helplessness was a great trial to a man who 
had always been self-reliant in high degree; but he bore 
the calamity with unfaltering patience. 

As a teacher, Langdell was a great benefactor of the 
legal profession, and hence of every free and orderly . 
community. As a man, he was worthy of all love and 
reverence. 


THE AGASSIZ HOUSE ON QUINCY 
pol EA Rd ge a Be 


Tue destruction by fire of the house on the corner 
of Quincy Street and Broadway, which was first occu- 
pied by Professor Louis Agassiz for twenty years, and 
then by his son Alexander for a longer term, is much 
to be regretted. The house was designed by Henry 
Greenough, and the College made it possible for 
Professor Agassiz to build it by taking a large mort- 
gage on it. 

The house was the scene of many interesting family 
events. The younger daughter, Pauline, was married 
in this house to Quincy A. Shaw; but none of Pro- 
fessor Agassiz’s grandchildren were born there. Alex- 
ander Agassiz lived in the house for two or three years 
after his marriage to Annie Russell in the winter of 
1860-61 ; and these two were again living in the house 
in 1873 when Professor Agassiz died there, his death 
being followed in a few weeks by the death of Mrs. 
Alexander Agassiz. The older daughter, Ida, was 
married to Major Higginson in December 1863, in the 
College chapel; but the wedding breakfast for them 
was given in the Quincy Street house. The Major had 
been severely wounded, and while he was trying to get 
well he lived in the Agassiz house for about a year. 

1From the Harvard Alumni Bulletin, March 29, 1917. The house 


on Quincy Street, Cambridge, Mass., in which Professors Louis and 
Alexander Agassiz had lived, was destroyed by fire January 28, 1917. 


58 A LATE HARVEST 


At this time, Alexander, his wife, and their little 
boy, the Higginsons, and Mr. Burckhardt — artist for 
Professor Agassiz — were all living there, in addition 
to Professor and Mrs. Agassiz. As was common then, 
there was only one bathtub in the house; and this one 
tub was not infrequently occupied by turtles or other 
aquatic or amphibious animals. Professor Agassiz’s 
strong instincts for collecting specimens for study, or 
for deposit in the Museum, often caused him to make 
unusual uses of his own dwelling. One morning, Mrs. 
Agassiz was just finishing dressing, and was putting 
on one of her boots, when she became aware that there 
was something wriggling inside the boot. She called 
to her husband, who was still asleep in the adjoining 
room, ““Oh, Agassiz! Come here — there’s a snake in 
my boot!” To which he sleepily replied, ““My dear, 
where can the other five be!” 

Professor Agassiz’s children came over from Switzer- 
land before the Quincy Street house was built. The 
boy came in 1849, and the girls in 1850. Alexander 
traveled alone from Neuchatel to Paris, and on the way 
gave a striking illustration of his preference for an 
elective system in education — a preference which had 
a strong influence on his after life. He had been obliged 
to take lessons in music, and particularly in playing on 
the violin. In that art he had acquired considerable 
skill, but under compulsion. If his teacher thought him 
inattentive, he would rap Alexander’s fingers with his 
bow. When the boy left Neuchatel, his relatives in- 
sisted that he should take with him his violin, which 


THE AGASSIZ HOUSE 59 


Alexander was very reluctant to do. Having passed 
the Swiss frontier, Alexander took advantage of an 
unusually long stop at a quiet way-station to leave his 
carriage, deposit his violin-case on the stone platform, 
jump on it with both feet, and reénter his carriage. 
Thereafter he never touched a violin; and, moreover, 
would have nothing to do with concerts or other musical 
entertainments — not even when his brother-in-law 
organized and maintained the Boston Symphony 
Orchestra. 

Between 1855 and 1863 hundreds of young women 
received in that house the best part of their education 
from Professor Agassiz, assisted by Mrs. Agassiz and 
his daughter Ida, and for part of the time by his son, 
a very winning but rather bashful young man. It was 
a novel kind of school as regards both discipline and 
subjects of instruction; but it was very stimulating, 
enlarging, and enjoyable. One great charm of this 
school was that Mrs. Agassiz, although never a teacher, 
was really the presiding officer, the intimate friend of 
the pupils, and the real manager of both pupils and 
teachers. Her gentle but commanding personality pro- 
vided all the discipline the school needed. The unique 
feature of the school was the daily lecture given by 
Professor Agassiz during the last hour of the morning. 
The topics in these lectures were varied, including geol- 
ogy, botany, and zodlogy; but they gave the girls a 
strong impression as to the real nature of scientific 
observation, imagination, and reasoning. Parents or 
relatives of the pupils were made welcome at this 


60 A’ LATE, HARVEST: 


lecture, and their attendance deepened the impression 
which the lecturer made on the young pupils. The 
school did not long survive the outbreak of the Civil 
War. It ceased in 1862. 

As a matter of fact, Alexander Agassiz did marry, 
in 1860, one of the pupils in the school; but she had 
been for years the intimate friend of his sister Pauline, 
and in that capacity was often a guest at the Quincy 
Street house. In those days, Alexander Agassiz had 
very little money at his disposal. I learned that in 
1858, when he was bow oar in the Harvard University 
crew, in which I rowed. He never could make any con- 
tribution whatever to the cost of the boat and its equip- 
ment. Fortunately, the crew had no expenses for food, 
service, or travel. 

Long after his marriage, Alexander described to me 
an incident which illustrates both his lack of money 
and his lack of self-confidence in matters which touched 
his feelings very nearly. Miss Russell lived in Milton, 
her father’s house being at least eleven miles from the 
Quincy Street house. Young Agassiz thought he was 
ready to state his case, and win or lose it all. So he 
walked to Mr. Russell’s house in Milton; but, arriving 
at the gate, his heart failed him, and he turned on his 
heel and walked back again. 

During Professor Louis Agassiz’s lifetime, the house 
was the scene of much cheerful and eager hospitality ; 
and many persons of distinction in the scientific world 
were entertained there. It was one of the most hospit- 
able houses in Cambridge and Boston. Many Harvard 


THE AGASSIZ HOUSE 61 


men who were young in the period from 1853 to 1863 
remember with delight the hospitalities of that house, 
and those of Mrs. Charles Lowell’s house near by on the 
same street; because at both they met the nicest kind 
of Boston and Cambridge girls. 

Among the most delightful family happenings in the 
house were the Christmas Eve festivities, which were 
brought over from Switzerland, and maintained for 
many years. All three children gathered — soon with 
their children — at the Quincy Street house on Christ- 
mas Eve, and spent the night there with the affectionate 
father and mother — grandfather and grandmother — 
as hosts. The tree was dressed just as it had been in the 
old country. The nuts were gilded and silvered before- 
hand; the colored glass balls, bright ornaments, and 
colored lights were distributed over the tree; and at the 
very top was placed the golden star. Then around the 
base of the tree the little manger was set in moss, with 
the Christmas baby, Joseph and Mary, the donkey and 
the cows, the shepherds, the wise men with their camels 
and offerings, and the angels, all in carved figures 
brought from Germany and Switzerland. Everything 
was in keeping with the early memories of their life as 
children in Switzerland. This custom was kept up so 
long as Professor Agassiz lived. This affectionate observ- 
ance brings to mind the general fact that family fétes 
and religious symbolism easily survive for many genera- 
tions the beliefs on which they were originally founded. 

After the death of Professor Louis Agassiz, in 1873, 
the house came into the possession of his only son 


62 A LATE HARVEST 


Alexander, who was already a man of large means be- 
cause of his extraordinary success in the management 
of the Calumet and Hecla mines. The house was much 
enlarged and much ornamented. In particular, hand- 
some wooden ceilings made in elaborate patterns by the 
hands of his friend John C. Bancroft (A.B., Harvard 
’54) were placed in two of the principal rooms.1- Many 
beautiful objects, procured by Mr. Agassiz in the course 
of his travels far and wide, adorned the house. 

It was the home of Mrs. Louis Agassiz till her death; 
and as she was active in the affairs of the Harvard 
Annex, which later became Radcliffe College, the house 
was the centre of many of the meetings and hospitalities 
which had to do with the development of the college 
for women now affiliated with Harvard University under 
the name of Radcliffe College. Mrs. Agassiz was the 
first President of Radcliffe. 

Mr. Alexander Agassiz built a house for use during 
the warmer part of the year at Newport, R. I., where 
he could carry on to advantage his studies of echino- 
derms and other marine animals; but he usually passed 
a portion of the cooler parts of the year in the Cam- 
bridge house. Committee meetings of the societies with 
which Mr. Agassiz was connected were often held there 
at dinner, and in the beautiful library after dinner. 
There scientific friends from all parts of the world en- 
joyed Mr. Agassiz’s cordial hospitality. 

His library had a large fireplace in which, in cold 

1 Fortunately, these two ceilings had gone into the possession of 


one of Mr. Alexander Agassiz’s sons, and had been removed to his 
residence. They were not lost, therefore, in the fire in 1917. 


THE AGASSIZ HOUSE 63 


weather, a fire of four-foot sticks was maintained and 
round that fire much talk went on with friends and 
neighbors, particularly at late hours in the evening. 
Mr. Agassiz had a habit of writing during the first part 
of the evening. About nine o’clock he took a cup of 
strong tea, and was not disposed to go to bed early. I 
lived near him in Quincy Street; and during the years 
when he was a member of the Harvard Corporation and 
active in the study and furthering of its interests, I 
often visited him in his library between nine and ten 
o'clock in the evening, and discussed with him the 
subjects interesting us both. Sometimes he would talk 
over his personal duties and interests of the moment, 
and ask my advice about them; and not infrequently 
he would read me something he had just written which 
had a controversial character. So I became acquainted 
with one of Mr. Agassiz’s most charming qualities. He 
would wax indignant over some matter in dispute, and 
early in the evening write a hot letter on the subject 
to the other person concerned; but when he read that 
letter to me, and I asked him, “Do you think you shall 
mail that letter?”’ he would reply, “ Not till to-morrow 
morning at any rate.”’ And the next day he would tell 
me, “I did not mail that letter I read to you last night ; 
Ietoreit up.) 

The house in which two such men — father and son 
— lived so long and did such notable work ought to have 
been preserved as a memorial of fine human character 
and great services; but it was built of wood and fire 
ruined it. 

It seems as if the possibility of preserving for later 


64 A LATE HARVEST 


generations the houses of important men or important 
families was passing, and that future generations would 
not experience the satisfaction of seeing where saints 
or heroes lived and died. Already in New England it is 
unusual that the house of a serviceable and successful 
man should be occupied by his son. In Boston and its 
vicinity I know of but one estate which has remained 
in the hands of one family through four generations. 
It is getting to be the rule in American cities that well- 
to-do people, as well as poor people, live in flats, not 
houses. The present tax laws of Massachusetts tend 
strongly to abolish open ground about a house. Now 
a flat in an apartment house, or a house squeezed into 
a solid block of houses, cannot well be converted into 
a monument — even a family monument. 

Still we cannot help regretting that the house where 
Louis and Alexander Agassiz lived between 1854 and 
1g1o has gone forever. The land belongs to Harvard 
College by bequest from Alexander Agassiz. Therefore 
we may hope that later a tablet may be set up on 
the spot, saying that here stood the house occupied by 
Louis Agassiz, 1854-73, and by Alexander Agassiz, 
1873-IgI0. 


bei , oie A. N Lie or De a 
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VANE 





THE WOMAN THAT WILL SURVIVE! 


Tue democratic social and governmental régime has 
now been at work on the relations of women to men, 
and of women to property and the inheritance of prop- 
erty, and on women’s rights over their children, for 
more than a hundred years; and the effects of this 
gradual development are now fairly well made out. The 
woman is freer in American society to-day than she ever 
was before in any part of the world, and less dependent 
as regards the earning of a livelihood; domestic rela- 
tions are juster than ever before; and education is more 
equalized between girls and boys, women and men. 
These gains or new advantages have, on the whole, 
made the lot of women safer and happier than it used 
to be; but there have been offsetting losses and disad- 
vantages. The principal disadvantage is that fewer 
women than formerly are able to follow the happiest, 
most informing, and most serviceable occupation of the 
female sex — the bearing and bringing up of children. 
The diminishing size of families in the civilized portions 
of the white race and the frequency of childlessness in 
married pairs prove, beyond question, that large num- 
bers of women are missing their most important and 
their happiest occupation. No gains in other directions 
can possibly compensate women for this loss; for the 
work of bearing and rearing children and making a 


1From The Delineator, August 1914. 


68 | A LATE HARVEST 


home for a family gives a woman her best chance of 
physical well-being and of sound intellectual and 
spiritual development. 

No accessibility for women to the callings or pro- 
fessions which until recently have been open only to 
men can compensate women for the loss or stunting 
of their opportunity for rendering loving and devoted 
service. No economic gains for women, no better access 
to the social excitements and so-called pleasures which 
city life affords, can possibly compensate young women 
for any impairment of their chances to win the natural 
joys of normal family life. No social or political service 
can bring women opportunity to contribute to the real 
progress and development of mankind comparable with 
that of the healthy wife and mother who bears and 
brings up from four to eight children. 

Any active-minded mother who follows the mental 
development of five or six children will receive herself 
a second schooling greatly superior to her first. It is a 
lively mental exercise to keep in touch with the succes- 
sively developed interests of a group of children from 
two to twenty years of age. The good mother trains 
her children to habits of order, industry, and consid- 
eration for others; she teaches them self-control and 
the habit of codperation; she cannot perform rightly 
the moral functions of wife, mother, and teacher un- 
less she learns to be just, and to be just she must not 
only be conscientious but sympathetic, not only accu- 
rate in observing and comparing facts and events but 
also imaginative and inventive; to command clearly, 


THE WOMAN THAT WILL SURVIVE — 69 


refuse firmly, and praise warmly require sound and 
discriminating thinking as well as quick decision. It is 
a matter of active discrimination and constant care on 
the part of the parents to secure for their family the 
associations which will be apt to improve and lift the 
family as years go by; and the mother does the greater 
part of this work. In this respect poor mothers are 
often more careful than rich mothers. 

The competent mother of a prosperous family also 
has before her in these days the admirable task of direct- 
ing and stimulating her entire family in the intelligent 
use of books and other reading-matter. No matter 
where she lives, in city, or in country, or on an island in 
the sea, she can use first-rate mental powers in exercis- 
ing this influence; for in the ordinary family life this 
training oftener comes from the mother than from the 
father. Hence the normal functions of a woman between 
twenty and fifty are vastly more precious than any 
others for her bodily, mental, and spiritual develop- 
ment; and this great normal occupation of women is 
the best one in every walk of life, in the humblest as 
well as the highest. 

It should be noticed, however, that many unmarried 
women win in part these precious opportunities for 
mental growth and exercise by taking care of other 
people’s children, or devoting themselves to the service 
of kinsfolk or of less fortunate neighbors. Some excep- 
tional women can follow with satisfaction the ordinary 
professions of men, and can take active part in the 
various social or industrial movements which are 


70 A LATE HARVEST 


pes 


furthered by public discussion and by the active stimu- 
lation of public opinion; but these exceptional women 
will, as a rule, have lives less happy and less service- 
able than those of their happily married childbearing 
contemporaries. 

What, then, is the reasonable view concerning the 
entrance of young women into all sorts of occupations 
that used to be reserved for men, such as school-teach- 
ing, service as clerks, cashiers, or secretaries, and as 
saleswomen in shops, operatives in mills, or operators 
in telegraph offices or telephone exchanges? These are 
all good occupations for young women, provided they 
do not impair health or unduly postpone marriage. 
In a‘large number of cases these occupations prove to 
be temporary with the average woman. Thus, the 
average term of service of women as. teachers in public 
schools is short, and the same is true of the average 
term of service of telephone girls and female clerks. 
Indeed, the exceptional cases of long service are gener- 
ally caused by some peculiarity of temperament or 
some untoward circumstances or condition, such as the 
necessity of contributing to the support of parents or 
of younger brothers or sisters. Such adverse conditions 
bring about long postponement of marriage for men; 
but that postponement is not so severe a calamity for 
men as it 1s for women. 

When the period of childbearing is over, or a young 
wife has been widowed, democratic society welcomes 
women to many interesting and useful occupations 
which afford women of intelligence and good-will excel- 


THE WOMAN THAT WILL SURVIVE 71 


lent outlets for the energies of their later years. The 
best school, however, for these later activities is normal 
family life from twenty to fifty or thereabouts. 

The secondary and higher education of women has 
been greatly improved during the past forty years; but 
it has not been sufficiently affected by the considera- 
tions that all women should be prepared in youth for 
maternity, and that training for other temporary avo- 
cations, though desirable in considerable variety, should 
always be subordinated to training for the main func- 
tion. Men have to be trained in youth for a great 
variety of professional and business occupations; and, 
other things being equal, that boy will get the most 
effective training who knows what his early profession 
or calling is to be. 

All girls should have had that advantage in their 
training, because they and their parents and teachers 
have known what their calling was to be. As a matter 
of fact, girls have not had this advantage, because their 
education has been too much assimilated to that of 
boys, partly for considerations of economy in the school 
administration of towns and cities, and partly because 
advocates of better education for females wanted to 
prove that girls are just as bright as boys in the same 
studies. This demonstration having now been given, 
it is no longer desirable to impair the education of girls 
and young women for this archaic motive. 

When one looks forward to the future influence 
of women on the development of civilized society, it 
is apparent that everyone should heartily desire that 


rhe A ‘LATE HARVEST 


their influence be increased. The functions of modern 
government have undergone a great change since the 
middle of the nineteenth century, partly because of the 
new democratic ideals, and partly because of the extraor- 
dinary progress of the applied sciences and especially 
of preventive medicine. 

The largest part of public expenditures, particularly 
of the municipal expenditures, is now directed to the 
improvement of the physical conditions of community 
life — to water supplies, drainage systems, public 
cleanliness, and public care of the sick, injured, defec- 
tive, and infirm; to means of public enjoyment and 
recreation; to safeguards against fire, drought, flood, 
and pestilence; and to the restriction or prevention of 
the destructive vices. These are all public activities 
which look toward the welfare of the present generation 
and of future generations. In these things women take 
more interest than men do, and they are better fitted 
by nature than men are to take thought for the human 
being of the future. It is the maternal instinct that 
inspires most of the constructive social work of women. 
The mother nature inspires every thoughtful woman to 
war against everything that menaces the morals and 
health of her home, to condemn the corrupting or 
unlovely sights which mar her neighborhood, and to 
contend against the misrule which inflicts loss or in- 
justice on the weakest and most ignorant members of 
the community. Woman is the natural defender of 
health and morals, primarily for her own flock, but 
secondarily for the community. The succeeding genera- 


THE WOMAN THAT WILL SURVIVE 73 


tions will find her concentrating her powers on building 
strong bulwarks of the State against the evil tendencies 
of city life and of the factory system — evils which will 
destroy the white race unless adequate remedies be 
found and applied. 

The value to society of any occupation is best judged 
by its product. If we apply this test to the occupation 
of the normal woman, who brings up from four to eight 
thoughtful and loving children and makes of them 
serviceable men and women, shall we not conclude that 
her occupation 1s the most precious in the world ? Under 
her guidance the influences of heredity and environ- 
ment combine to produce the new generation. The 
influence of heredity on her children is in part beyond 
her control; but she knows that, under favorable con- 
ditions, she can affect profoundly their environment. 

Hence her interest in all. the social, industrial, and 
governmental problems that touch the life of her family. 

The ultimate woman is, then, the vigorous, nursing, 
teaching mother of a family, whose motherhood grows 
more and more comprehensive as life goes on, and 
finally comes to embrace four generations of kindred 
and friends, and all cast-down and unhappy people. 
That is the woman who, with the help of modern science 
and the new ethics, will survive all the present perver- 
sions and delusions, as she has survived the wrongs and 
wrecks of the past, and will be the joy and stay of the 
coming generations. 

Among the great religions, Christianity has been by 
far the kindest to women, and through them to the 


74 A LATE HARVEST 


human race. The Christian nations put a higher esti- 
mate than the non-Christian on the intellectual and 
moral capacities of women. It.is they that ask, about 
any unusually serviceable man or woman, Who and 
what was the mother? It is they that judge the degree 
of civilization which any race has attained by the way 
it has treated and is treating its women. It is they that 
have worked out, in the course of many centuries, the 
modern conception of the serviceable and lovely woman 
— just, courageous, thoughtful, tender, and pure, the 
equal comrade of man, the mother of a family, the ideal 
human being. 


BRINGING UP A BOY} 


Tue right bringing-up of a boy needs on the part of | 
the father and mother a constant, sympathetic study 
of the individual boy’s physical and mental qualities, 
and of his temperament or disposition. Sons of the 
same father and mother often exhibit great variety and 
sometimes marked contrasts. 

The inquiry into the boy’s nature should reveal on 
the one hand his natural excellences or gifts, and on the 
other, his natural defects. It is much more important, 
however, to find as early as possible the gifts than to 
find the deficiencies; for one gift may be the making of 
him, while he may get along very well through life in 
spite of serious deficiencies. 

Throughout the whole training of a boy, attention 
should be chiefly given to developing and increasing his 
capacities, innate or acquired. In giving direction to his 
book studies, most of his time should be given to studies 
he enjoys; and the same is true of physical exercise. 

If a boy is self-willed and masterful — highly promis- 
ing qualities — it is best to give him employments in 
which he can develop these qualities in a safe, produc- 
tive way. Then he will not develop them in a mischie- 
vous way. If, on the other hand, a boy shows feebleness 
of will, or a tendency to weak compliance, it is of the 
utmost importance to train him in deciding things for 


1Krom The Delineator, October 1914. 


76 A LATE HARVEST 


himself ; for it is the weak-willed boy that is in danger 
of going astray when, by necessity, he parts from the 
parents who have been in the habit of deciding every- 
thing for him. 

The most monstrous of educational dogmas is the 
insistence on “‘breaking”’ a child’s will and then training 
him to implicit obedience. No greater injury can be 
done a child than this ‘“‘breaking’’; for the moral end of 
education in family, school, and life is not obedience 
but self-control. The dogma is a vicious importation 
into family and school of a training which is only fit for 
military and ecclesiastical uses. 

It is an ancient but detestable theory in education 
that no discipline or training that is enjoyable is useful, 
and that mental exercises must be repulsive if they are 
to be of use in training the power of application. Pre- 
cisely the opposite is the correct principle. 

The power of concentrated attention is acquired far 
more easily and completely in a study or sport which 
interests the child than in a study or sport which does 
not; and that power, once gained, can be effectively 
applied in unattractive subjects. Both children and 
adults undergo without injury, when they are enjoying 
themselves, hardships and fatigues that would exhaust 
and depress them physically if they were not enjoying 
themselves. 

Boys and girls will dance for five hours with pleasure 
and without harmful fatigue, when they would be used 
up by running and hopping without music for the same 
period along a dull highway. This is just as true of 


BRINGING UP A BOY = 


enjoyed studies as of sports. In learning to write, for 
example, more time should be given to the letters the 
child can form well than to those it can not; for the 
needed eye- and hand-skill will be more rapidly devel- 
oped in making the first than the second. Writing- 
masters used to act on the opposite principle: if a child 
could not make g or o well, it should make nothing but 
gs and oa’s. 

In the training of children, whether boys or girls, the 
effort should always be to train their senses to accurate 
observation, but to do this through play and work 
which interest the children. Those games or sports are 
always to be preferred which cultivate the accurate use 
of eye, ear, and hand, rather than those which rely on 
chance or luck for their interest. At school this training 
in exact observation would be amply given through 
nature study, manual training, and the laboratory 
teaching of the sciences. 

Any skill of eye and hand which a boy may acquire 
will be useful to him all his life, even if he follow no 
mechanical trade. In these days of high wages in the 
building-trades it is important for every man who must 
earn his living and wishes to own his house to be able 
himself to do many things instead of hiring other men 
to do them, else he will not be able to keep his house in 
good repair. 

Some of the most valuable and profitable professions 
are open only to men who possess an unusual combina- 
tion of sense-skills. Thus every artist must have great 
skill of both eye and hand. Every surgeon should 


78 A LATE HARVEST 


possess a combination of skills with eye, ear, and hand, 
and retentive memory for forms learned through the eye, 
textures learned through the touch, and sounds learned 
through the ear. Many trades need special sense- and 
nerve-skill. Thus, a motorman, a chauffeur, or a loco- 
motive engineer needs a quick eye and a short-time 
reaction; and every machinist should possess similar 
faculties. A painter should possess a discriminating eye 
for shades of color; and without the same trained sense 
a blacksmith cannot temper properly the drills and 
many other of the implements he makes. 

The early discovery by parents of special sense-gifts 
in their boy, if wisely followed up, may assure his 
success in life. 

Far the best thing the parents can do for a boy is to 
develop in him a firm character and a group of strong 
motives which will lead him in the great majority of 
cases to right action. 

How may parents accomplish this best of all services 
for their sons? First, through inheritance from them- 
selves. In the formation of character both heredity and 
environment count largely, but heredity most. To be 
sure, parents are sometimes confounded by the appear- 
ance among their children of a child whose powers 
greatly exceed those of his parents or of any known 
ancestor, or, on the contrary, fall much below those of 
any progenitor. 

The direct responsibility of parents is greatest, how- 
ever, in determining the environment of their children; 
and the chief factors in determining that environment 


BRINGING UP A BOY’ 79 


are the moral character and the habitual manners and 
customs of the two parents. 

Children understand from a very early age the moral 
qualities of their parents, and are strongly influenced 
thereby. They know, for example, whether their 
mother is just or not in her dealings with her children. 
They soon learn whether they can depend on what she 
says, or must make allowances for her inaccuracy and 
exaggerations. They are much more affected by her 
habitual conduct toward them than by her exhorta- 
tions; by the manner of her commands, than by their 
substance. 

A father who never exhorts and seldom commands 
may nevertheless have a profound influence on his boys 
all through their lives, because his own way of life gives 
them complete assurance as to the conduct in them 
that he would approve or would condemn. 

A son can only have a kind of animal attachment to 
a peevish, self-indulgent, irritable mother; and a son 
will not have even that affectionate feeling toward a 
luxurious, indolent, and selfish father. It is the same 
with the teachers of boys. To have a good influence 
with boys, the teacher must be himself high-minded, 
altruistic, and just. He may be an impatient or passion- 
ate man, and yet have a good influence on boys; but 
he must never fail as regards truthfulness, courage, and 
moral vigor. 

Active-minded boys often form a clear opinion about 
their parents’ candor from the habits of the parents 
in answering their frequent questions. Downright 


80 A LATE HARVEST 


confessions of ignorance on the part of parents do no 
harm whatever. Imaginary answers in imagined cases 
can do but little harm; but at worst they are futile or 
absurd. False, misleading, or shifty answers to serious 1n- 
quiries do infinite harm, because they destroy the boy’s 
confidence in the parent. An intelligent boy is always 
indignant when he learns that his father or teacher put 
him off with a fable when he had asked for the fact, or 
gave him a rigmarole instead of the simple truth. 

Boys often love tenderly a foolish and ignorant parent 
who has been good to them; but insincerity, false pre- 
tense, or hypocrisy found out by children in their par- 
ents or teachers destroys the very foundation of respect 
and confidence. 

Assuming conscientious parents, who wish to do 
their very best for their sons, what are the qualities that 
they should aim to develop in each boy? The first is 
alertness of mind and senses. All promising boys show 
more or less of their quality in their early years. They 
are inquisitive; their minds and senses are wide-awake 
to see, hear, and touch. They want to try experiments; 
they learn by experimenting. When they first see a 
lighted candle they reach to touch the flame. From 
morning till night they are active and excursive, not 
dwelling long on the same object or the same subject, 
but keeping all their faculties constantly in play and 
getting practice in observation. The alert boy is often 
troublesome to parents and teachers, but he is the most 
promising boy, and great pains should be taken to 
direct his inquiring mind and eager senses to wholesome 


BRINGING UP A BOY 81 


objects, like plants, animals, brooks, forests, landscape, 
and the products and tools of human industry. 

Parents who are in constant and intimate companion- 
ship with their children can do them a great service by 
cultivating in them the habit of doing their best in 
whatever occupation is interesting them strongly. It 
is not natural to children to devote continuous atten- 
tion to any subject for a long period. What is important 
is that, while they work on any subject, they should 
work hard with a concentrated attention, if it is only 
for ten minutes at a time. 

Some parents are annoyed when a child gets so 
absorbed in a book, a picture, or a game that it makes 
no response to a question or a command, but they 
never should be. The child has unconsciously inhib- 
ited all sights and sounds external to its occupation 
for the moment; and success in such inhibition is a 
very favorable sign in any child. 

The group of motives toward right action, which 
wise parents will strive to develop in their children, 
includes hope, love, and loyalty, and most of all the 
sense of duty — motives which all promising children 
feel from an early age, and which, when well trained in 
youth, remain the dominating motives of adult life. 

The promising boys of the future should be carefully 
trained to another moral and mental quality of utmost 
value to society, namely, purity. This is a demand 
which civilized society and some barbarous communi- 
ties have long made with regard to women, but has been 
only comparatively lately suggested with regard to men. 


82 A LATE HARVEST 


The progress of biological science within the last 
twenty years has made it clear that purity and chivalry 
in boys and men must be made a specific object of train- 
ing in the rising generations, in order that civilized man 
may successfully contend against the physical and moral 
evils which urban life and the factory system have 
developed in the white race. 

Some of these evils are ancient ; but the grave menace 
of their existence and growing prevalence has not been 
appreciated until lately. Fortunately, the same prog- 
ress of biological science which has exhibited the evils 
has provided means of contending against them. The 
only complete remedy, however, will be found in the 
gradual acceptance of new standards of purity and 
honor in the male sex. 

Finally, in the bringing-up of boys, parents and 
teachers ought to dwell on the sources and nature of 
the real satisfactions of life. They should point out 
that the best things cannot be bought with money ; that 
the most enjoyable acquisitions are personal skills, 
mental capacities, and the domestic joys, none of which 
is determined or greatly affected by the amount of one’s 
material possessions; that the possession of wealth, or 
of the power that raw wealth gives, is not a sensible 
object for any boy to set before himself, since 1t proves 
a curse oftener than a blessing. 

Among the life-occupations which present themselves 
to his choice, let every boy make sure that he choose an 
occupation or business the product of which is always 
useful and never harmful to society at large. 


ADVANTAGES OF POOR MEN’S SONS! 


Wuo are the poor men referred to in this title, whose 
sons have advantages over rich men’s sons? I mean 
not the very poor men, made so or kept so by misfor- 
tune, incompetency, or vices, but the common American 
male adults, children of self-respecting and self-support- 
ing people themselves, who lay up a few hundred dollars 
in preparation for marriage, marry young on the chance 
that their health and their working-power will hold out, 
and then succeed in earning a fair livelihood for their 
families, without ever making any considerable sav- 
ings, although they may win new comforts and enjoy- 
ments for themselves and their families as life goes on. 
They do not suffer from anxiety about meeting the next 
week’s rent, or providing sufficient food and clothing 
for the family ; but they are always exposed to the loss 
of earning-power through sickness, accident, or the 
consequences of wasteful or injurious habits. 

Such a poor man marries his poor wife without pos- 
sessing anything that can be called securities for the 
future, and he and his wife take the responsibilities and 
win the joys of parenthood in the simple, natural way, 
without any pecuniary resources except the products 
of their own daily labor, and without any considerable 
reserves of any sort, in the faith that with the help of 
their children they will be able to earn the living of the 


1From The Delineator, January 1917. 


84 A LATE HARVEST 


family day by day and year by year. The great major- 
ity of American young men enter on family life in this 
faith, and the great majority of American children are 
brought up in this way. 

The sons in such families have securities against lazi- — 
ness, selfishness, and self-indulgence, and they have 
inducements to diligence and helpfulness, which the 
sons of well-to-do or rich families can hardly obtain. 

From the beginning of reflective life, they have the 
consciousness that their help is needed to get necessaries 
and comforts for the family, and to make easier the 
lives of the father and mother. They know from the 
start that they will have their own living to get when 
they grow up, and that the nature of that living will 
depend on their own capacity to earn money. They are 
able to see that their childhood labors on behalf of the 
family will add to their own individual earning-capacity 
in their later lives. Through their contributions as 
children to the family well-being, they acquire early 
the habit of productive labor, a habit which brings 
solid satisfaction to any vigorous boy, if the labor be 
not pushed beyond the limits of his strength. 

Every normal boy, like every man who is worth his 
salt, likes productive labor: first, because there is 
pleasure in the bodily and mental exertion itself; 
secondly, because he takes an interest in the product of 
his labor; and thirdly, because he values what that 
product yields for the family. The boy’s productive 
work is done immediately for his family, but it also 
gives him useful training in earning-capacity. 


ADVANTAGES OF POOR MEN’S SONS 85 


A single example from real life will suffice to illustrate 
the principles already laid down. A boy of fourteen, 
large and strong for his age, ploughed and harrowed his 
father’s fields with a pair of steers trained by himself, 
and then did all the sowing and planting in those fields 
before his father could leave the lumbering which occu- 
pied him during the winter and spring. Later in the 
season he went fishing every day with his father in a 
dory, and as his father was seasick whenever there was 
a swell on the fishing-grounds, the boy not infrequently 
rowed the loaded dory home six or seven miles. 

When this boy was sixteen years old, he went lobster- 
ing six months of the year, alone, in an open boat pro- 
pelled by sail or oars. With the proceeds of this heavy 
labor he bought flour and dry-goods for the family, he 
being the oldest of eleven children. From the time he 
was nine or ten years old, he sawed and split most of 
the firewood for the family, and much of the time car- 
ried it into the kitchen; and he also shared with the 
older sisters the bringing of the water from the well to 
the kitchen. Occasionally he was hired by the nearest 
neighbor of the family by the day or hour; and the 
money thus earned all went to the family until he was 
eighteen years old, when he began to work for wages 
away from home. 

This varied experience made the boy acquainted with 
many kinds of work on land and water and with the use 
of a variety of tools. At eighteen he was capable of 
earning his living in several ways with hands and brain. 


Although his boyhood had been apparently filled with 


86 | A LATE HARVEST 


outdoor productive labor, he had learned to read, write, 
and cipher better than most of the neighboring children, 
and had acquired skill enough in these arts to enable 
him to avail himself of later opportunities to take work 
which required letter-writing, calculations, and the 
keeping of accounts. 

In consequence, he has had a much more interesting 
and profitable life than his father had, and has brought 
up a son who can earn his living not only in. pursuits 
where the work is largely manual, but also in pursuits 
where it is chiefly mental. 

When one compares the resourcefulness and acquired 
skill of such a boy at eighteen with those of a city-bred 
youth who never has done any manual labor, or 
wrestled resolutely with natural obstacles and resist- 
ances on land or sea, or increased the yield of garden, 
farm, or forest with delight, one learns that the ordinary 
indoor home and school training given to well-to-do 
children has serious defects and disadvantages from 
the standpoint of bodily training and also from that of 
moral training. 

The country-bred child who has taken active part in 
the defense of the family against the rigors of nature, 
and in the support and care of the household, has 
learned lessons in codperation and loving service which 
have high moral value, and promise much for the 
adult life. 

The thoughtful son of a poor man is sure to learn 
early two lessons which will be useful all his life: The 
first is to avoid unnecessary spending, and the second is 


ADVANTAGES OF POOR MEN’S SONS _ 87 


to save money or goods for future use. He distin-\ 
guishes between transitory and durable satisfactions, | 
and avoids spending his earnings for the unsatisfying. 
gratifications, in order to use his money later on the 
satisfying. This is first-rate practice in discrimination 
and self-control. 

The children of the well-to-do are apt to keep up 
a steady small expenditure on trivial luxuries; the 
children of poor men have to deny themselves silly 
expenditures, to their great advantage, both physical 
and moral. They learn to go without cheerfully; not 
to spend and not to waste. 

The children of professional men of small income, as 
well as the children of farmers, mechanics, or laborers, 
can often get this training in productive labor, codpera- 
tion, and economy. The boys can do all the heavy work 
of the household, like taking care of the furnace, carry- 
ing coal and kindling to the kitchen, blacking boots and 
_ shoes, shoveling snow in winter, and keeping the front 
yard and back yard neat all the year round. 

One day I was looking at the full-length portrait of a 
professional man, in company with one of his sons, who 
had already become, within a few years after leaving 
college, an eminent railroad manager. The portrait 
seemed to me a strong likeness as to both face and 
figure, but when I asked the son what he thought of it, 
he replied with enthusiasm: “It’s admirable! Those 
are the very boots that I’ve cleaned hundreds of times !”’ 

That sensible father, who knew so well how to bring 
up his boys, was always obliged to live frugally, because 


88 A LATE HARVEST 


he had a large family and a moderate salary. But he 
lived a long, serviceable, and happy life. That son, 
who was so serviceable at home, became a distinguished 
business man and a wise philanthropist, friendly and 
influential with all sorts and conditions of men. 

Any boy who is promising physically and morally 
takes keen satisfaction in contributing to the welfare 
of the household and to the ease of mind of the father 
and mother with regard to the family income and its 
best applications. Girls who help their mothers in 
caring for the house and the children win a similar 
satisfaction and moral gain. 

It would be difficult to exaggerate the advantage 
children thus brought up have over children who are 
always attended by hired servants, so that they never 
do any work either for themselves or for their parents. 
There is a considerable moral difference between a 
person — male or female, young or old — who is clean, 
tidy, and orderly through his own habitual action, and 
the person whois made so only by the action of servants. 

Poor men’s children receive a valuable training in 
going without superfluities and in avoiding excess; and 
this training comes in a perfectly natural and inevitable 
way, and not through artificial regulation or discipline. 
Such experience heightens the enjoyment of necessaries 
and comforts not only in childhood, but also all through 
later life. It is a grave error to suppose that luxurious 
living is more enjoyable than plain living. On the 
contrary, plain living is much the more enjoyable in the 
long run, besides being more wholesome. 


ADVANTAGES OF POOR MEN’S SONS 89 


Of course, it is only the sensible children of poor men 
that really win the advantages which narrow family 
circumstances are fitted to give them. Silly children of 
the poor spend the little money that comes to them 
quite as foolishly as silly children of the rich spend far 
larger sums. They will run to get a stick of candy or a 
cigarette with the cent they have somehow acquired, 
just as eagerly as the rich man’s daughter buys 
chocolates or his son cigarettes. 

Thoughtless people are apt to pity poor men’s 
children because they have few objects with which to 
play. They imagine that rich men’s children who have 
expensive toys enjoy themselves better at play. This 
pity is without foundation in fact and is altogether 
wasted. 

I have seen a group of little girls “playing house’ 
with great enthusiasm and noisy enjoyment on a dusty 
gravel-walk in front of a dilapidated house, their 
instruments for the sport being a few brickbats which 
represented rooms, an assortment of dry chicken-bones, 
most of which had been partly wrapped in pieces of 
paper or rags to represent clothes and so represented 
men, women, and children; and numerous bits of broken 
crockery to represent dishes and household vessels. 
These simple materials apparently gave them as much 
satisfaction as any elaborate playhouse or expensive 
dolls would have given. 

I lately examined the assortment of materials with 
which an active boy of seven amused himself hour after 
hour and day after day in the back yard of his father’s 


, 


go A LATE HARVEST 


cottage. There were three broken wooden boxes, a 
broken chair, a damaged sawhorse, some fragments of 
barrel-heads, and the wrecks of a baby’s pen and 
carriage. These motley materials afforded a sufficient 
basis for the vivid play of the boy’s active imagination 
in various interesting performances. 

It is just as true of children as it is of adults, that 

wealth of precious materials is not necessary to keen 
_ enjoyment of games or play. 
\ The great mass of American people need to be pro- 
“tected, on the one hand, from the depressing effects of 
/ poverty, and on the other, from the corroding influence 
of luxury ; but of the two evils luxury is worse in both 
its bodily and its spiritual effects. 








THE CHANGES NEEDED IN AMERICAN 
SECONDARY EDUCATION! 


ares best part of all human knowledge has come by 
exact and studied observation made through the senses 
of sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. The most 
important part of education has always been the train- 
ing of the senses through which that best part of knowl- 
edge comes. This training has two precious results in 
the individual, besides the faculty of accurate observa- 
tion — one the acquisition of some sort of skill, the 
other the habit of careful reflection and measured rea- 
soning which results in precise statement and record. 

A baby’s assiduity in observation and experimenta- 
tion and the rapidity of its progress in sense-training 
are probably never matched in after life. 

The boy on a farm has admirable opportunities to 
train eye, ear, and hand, because he can always be look- 
ing at the sky and the soils, the woods, the crops, and 
the forests, having familiar intercourse with many 
domestic animals, using various tools, listening to the 
innumerable sweet sounds which wind, water, birds, 
and insects make in the countryside, and in his holidays 
hunting, fishing, and roaming. 


1 A paper read in the conference on education of the Second Pan- 
_ American Scientific Congress, held in Washington, December 27, 
V/ Igt5, to January 8, 1916. Reprinted in Bulletin, 1916, No. to, of the 
Bureau of Education, Department of the Interior. 


94 A LATE HARVEST 


The fundamental trades, such as those of the car- 
penter, mason, blacksmith, wheelwright, painter, hand- 
leatherworker and shoemaker, havé provided immensely 
valuable education for the human race, and have, in- 
deed, been the chief means of raising barbarous peoples 
to a condition of approximate civilization. To-day, the 
teaching of those trades, without much use of machin- 
ery, is the best mode of developing the natural powers 
of a backward people. 

In noble and rich families some training of the senses 
was obtained all through feudal times, because the 
men were brought up to war and the chase, and the 
women not only shared in some degree the sports of the 
men, but acquired the manual skill which sewing, 
hand-weaving, and embroidering demand. 

The advent of mechanical power and machinery has 
greatly impaired the educational value of many trades, 
and this impairment has become so common that it 
may almost be called universal. The accurate joints a 
carpenter used to make by the careful use of his own 
eyes and hands are now made by machines almost 
without human intervention. The horseshoe which a 
blacksmith used to turn by hand on his anvil, and tem- 
per in his own little fire with a very accurate apprecia- 
tion of the changing tints of the hot metal, is now turned 
out by machinery as one of a hundred thousand, almost 
without touch of human hand or glance of human eye. 
The ordinary uniformity of a machine product is due 
to invariability in the action of the machine, and this 
invariability is a main object from the point of view of 


CHANGES NEEDED IN EDUCATION | 95 


the inventor or the proprietor; but that same invaria- 
bility makes the tending of the machine of little use in 
the education of the human being that tends it — child, 
woman, or man. 

The difference between a good workman and a poor 
one in agriculture, mining, or manufacturing is the 
difference between the man who possesses well-trained 
senses and good judgment in using them and the man 
who does not. 

It follows from these considerations that the training 
of the senses should always have been a prime object | 
in human education, at every stage from primary to 
professional. That prime object it has never been, and 
is not to-day. 

The kind of education the modern world has inherited 
from ancient times was based chiefly on literature. Its 
principal materials, besides some elementary mathe- 
matics, were sacred and profane writings, both prose 
and poetry, including descriptive narration, history, 
philosophy, and religion; but accompanying this tra- 
dition of language and literature was another highly 
useful transmission from ancient times — the study of 
the fine arts, with the many kinds of skill that are indis- 
pensableto artistic creation. Wherever in Europe thecul- 
tivation of the fine arts has survived in vigor, there the 
varied skill of the artist in music, painting, sculpture, and 
architecture has been a saving element in national edu- 
cation, although it affected strongly only a limited num- 
ber of persons. The English nation was less influenced 
by artistic culture than the nations of the Continent. 


96 A LATE HARVEST 


| American secondary and higher education copied Eng- 
lish models, and were also injuriously affected by the 
Puritan, Genevan, Scotch Presbyterian, and Quaker 
disdain for the fine arts. As a result the programmes of 
‘secondary schools in the United States allotted only 
) an insignificant portion of school time to the cultivation 
of the senses through music and drawing; and, until 
lately, boys and girls in secondary schools did not have 
their attention directed to the fine arts by any outside 
or voluntary organizations. As a rule, the young men 
/ admitted to American colleges can neither draw nor 
sing; and they possess no other skill of eye, ear, or hand. 

Since the middle of the eighteenth century, a new 
element in the education of the white race has been 
developing, slowly for a hundred years, but rapidly 
during the past fifty. This new element is physical, 
chemical, and biological science. Through the study of 
these subjects the medical profession has been revolu- 
tionized, and several new professions of high value have 
been created, such as that of the chemist, of the engineer, 
— civil, mechanical, electrical, or metallurgical, — and 
of the forester. Through the radical work of great inven- 
tors and discoverers and of these new professions, all 
the large industries and transportation methods of the 
world, and therefore the commerce of the world, have 
been so changed that the producers and traders of times 
preceding 1850 would find, if they should revisit the 
scenes of their labors, that the processes by which they 
made their living had completely disappeared. This 
prodigious change should have instructed the makers 


CHANGES NEEDED IN EDUCATION — 97 


of programmes for schools and colleges maintained by 
nations which were undergoing this great revolution in 
regard to their means of livelihood; but for the most 
part professional educators have been, and still are, 
blind to the necessity of a corresponding reformation 
or revision of the processes of education. 

There is one profession, however, in which the edu- 
cational processes have been adequately changed, but 
only within recent years, namely, the profession of 
medicine. The reason for the comparatively early im- 
provement of medical education is that the medical art 
has always depended, for such measure of success as it 
attained, on the physician’s power of accurate observa- 
tion and his faculty of reasoning cautiously and soundly 
on the testimony which his senses gave him. From 
remotest times the successful physician has been by 
nature a naturalist. He saw and heard straight, and 
his touch gave him trustworthy information. He has 
still, and must always have, the naturalist’s tempera- 
ment, and he must possess the naturalist’s trained 
senses. a The reason that medicine and surgery have 
within twenty-five years made such astonishing prog- 
ress is that the practitioner, possessing the senses and 
mental habits of the naturalist, has been supplied 
through the progress of biological, chemical, and physi- 
cal science with wonderful new means of accurate diag- 
nosis. \The training the medical ‘student now receives 
senses; and this training is given by experts in the 
use of their own eyes, ears, and hands in diagnosis 


98 A LATE HARVEST 


and treatment. The just reasoning follows on the 
trustworthy observation. 

What has already been done in medical education 
needs to be done in all other forms of education, 
whether for trades or for professions, whether for 
occupations chiefly manual or for those chiefly mental. 

The great increase of urban population at the expense 
of rural which has taken place during the past sixty 
years, with the accompanying growth of factories and 
the crowding together of the working people and their 
families, has resulted, so far as schools and colleges are 
concerned, in placing more children and youths than 
formerly under the influence of systematic education 
and keeping them there for a longer period; but this 
improvement has been accompanied by a decline in the 
amount and quality of the sense-training which children 
and adolescents have received. In cities and large 
towns the trade which a boy chooses, or is assigned to, 
no longer demands for admission a prolonged appren- 
ticeship. Machinery turns out an ample product, without 
the need of much skilled labor. The general result is 
an inadequate training of the senses of the rising 
generation for accurate and quick observation. 

In recent years, on account of the complexities, urgen- 
cies, and numerous accidents of urban life, there has 
been a striking revelation of the untrustworthiness of 
human testimony, not because witnesses intended to 
deceive, but because they were unable to see, hear, 
or describe accurately what really happened in their 
presence. This inability to see, hear, and describe cor- 


CHANGES NEEDED IN EDUCATION 99 


rectly is not at all confined to uneducated people. On 
the contrary, it is often found in men and women whose 
education has been prolonged and thorough, but never 
contained any significant element of sense-training. 

( Many highly educated American ministers, lawyers, 
and teachers have never received any scientific training, 
have never used any instrument of precision, possess 
no manual skill whatever, and cannot draw, sing, or 
play on a musical instrument. Their entire education 
has dwelt in the region of language, literature, philos- 
ophy, and history, with a brief excursion into the field 
of mathematics. Many an elderly professional man, 
looking back on his education and examining his own 
habits of thought and of expression, perceives that his 
senses were never trained to act with precision; that 
his habits of thought permit vagueness, obscurity, and 
inaccuracy; and that his spoken or written statement 
lacks that measured, cautious, candid, simple quality 
which the scientific spirit fosters and inculcates. 

A survey of the programmes of the existing American 
secondary schools — public, private, and endowed — 
would show that, as a rule, they pay little attention to 
the training of the senses, and provide small opportuni- 
ties for acquiring any skill of eye, ear, or hand, or any 
acquaintance with the accurate recording and cautious 
reasoning which modern science prescribes. The general 
result of such a survey would be that the secondary 
schools are giving not more than one tenth to one sixth 
of their force to observational, sense-training subjects. 
‘Any school superintendent, teacher, or committee man 


100 A LATE HARVEST 


can verify the results of this analysis in any secondary 
schools with which he is acquainted. 

The changes which ought to be made immediately 
in the programmes of American secondary schools, in 
order to correct the glaring deficiencies of the present 
programmes,are chiefly the introduction of more hand- , 
ear-, and eye-work,such as drawing, carpentry, turning, 
music, sewing, and cooking; and the giving of much 
more time to the sciences of observation — chemistry, 
physics, biology, and geography — not political, but 
geological and ethnographical geography. These sci- 
ences should be taught in the most concrete manner 
possible — that is, in laboratories, with ample experi- 
menting done by the individual pupil with his own eyes 
and hands, and in the field through the pupil’s own 
observation guided by expert leaders. In secondary 
schools situated 1n the country the elements of agricul- 
ture should have an important place in the programme, 
and the pupils should all work in the school gardens 
and experimental plats, both individually and in codp- 
eration with others. In city schools a manual training 
should be given which should prepare a boy for any one 
of many different trades, not by familiarizing him with 
the details of actual work in any trade, but by giving 
him an all-round bodily vigor, a nervous system capable 
of multiform codrdinated efforts, a liking for doing his 
best in competition with mates, and a widely applicable 
skill of eye and hand. Again, music should be given a 
substantial place in the programme of every secondary 
school, in order that all the pupils may learn musical 


CHANGES NEEDED IN EDUCATION tor 


notation, and may get much practice in reading music 
and in singing. Drawing, both freehand and mechani- 
cal, should be given ample time in every secondary 
school programme, because it is an admirable mode of 
expression which supplements language and is often to 
be preferred to it, lies at the foundation of excellence in 
many arts and trades, affords simultaneously good 
training for both eye and hand, and gives much enjoy- 
ment throughout life to the possessor of even a moderate 
amount of skill. 

Drawing and music, like other fine-art studies, were 
regarded by the Puritan settlers of New England and 
by all their social and religious kindred as superfluities, 
which, if not positively evil, were still of wasteful or 
harmful tendency, and were, therefore, to be kept out 
of every course of education. By many teachers and 
educational administrators music and drawing are still 
regarded as fads or trivial accomplishments not worthy 
to rank as substantial educational material; whereas 
they are important features in the outfit of every hu- 
man being who means to be cultivated, efficient, and 
rationally happy. In consequence, many native Amert- 
cans have grown up without musical faculty and with- 
out any power to draw or sketch, and so without the 
high capacity for enjoyment, and for giving joy, which 
even a moderate acquaintance with these arts imparts. 
This is a disaster which has much diminished the happi- 
ness of the native American stock. It is high time that 
the American school —urban or rural; mechanical, 
commercial, or classical; public, private, or endowed — 


102 A LATE HARVEST 


set earnestly to work to repair this great loss and 
damage. Although considerable improvements have 
been recently made in the programmes of American 
secondary schools, especially within the past ten years, 
or since vocational training has been much discussed, 
multitudes of Americans continue to regard the sense- 
training subjects as fads and superfluities. They say, 
let the public elementary schools teach thoroughly 
reading, writing, spelling, and arithmetic, and let 
natural science, drawing, music, domestic arts and 
crafts, and manual training severely alone. Let the 
secondary schools teach thoroughly English, Latin, 
American history, and mathematics, with a dash of 
economics and civics, and cease to encumber their pro- 
grammes with bits of the new sciences and the new 
sociology. This doctrine is dangerously conservative ; 
for it would restrict the rising generations to memory 
studies, and give them no real acquaintance with the 
sciences and arts which within a hundred years have 
revolutionized all the industries of the white race, 
modified profoundly all the political and ethical con- 
ceptions of the freedom-loving peoples, and added 
wonderfully to the productive capacity of Europe and 
America. 

If anyone asks how it can be possible that these new 
subjects, all time-consuming, should be introduced into 
the existing secondary schools of the United States, the 
answer — adequate, though not easy to put into prac- 
tice — is, first, that the memory subjects and the math- 
ematics should be somewhat reduced as regards number 


“CHANGES NEEDED IN EDUCATION 103 


of assigned periods in the week; secondly, that after- 
noon hours shouldbe utilized, or, in other words, that 
the school day should be lengthened; and thirdly, that 
the long summer vacation should be reduced. It is 
worse than absurd to turn city children into the streets 
for more than two months every summer. Since the 
new subjects all require bodily as well as mental exer- 
tion, they can be added to the memory subjects without 
any risk to the health of the children, provided that the 
shops, laboratories, and exercising rooms be kept cool 
and well ventilated. In rural schools a good part of the 
new work in sowing, planting, cultivating the ground, 
and harvesting must be done out-of-doars. The obser- 
vational, manual, and scientific subjects often awaken 
in a boy or young man for the first time an intellectual 
interest and a zeal in work which memory studies have 
never stirred. Hand-and-eye-work often develops a 
power of concentrated attention which bookwork had 
failed to produce, but which can be transferred to 
bookwork when once created. All the new subjects 
require vigorous and constant use of the memory, 
and give much practice in exact recording, and in 
drawing only the limited and legitimate inference from 
the recorded facts. 

The suggested changes in American school pro- 
grammes will not make public school life harder or more 
fatiguing for the pupils. On the contrary, observational 
study and concrete teaching are more interesting to 
both children and adults than memory study of any 
sort; and whenever the interest of pupils is aroused, it 


104 A LATE HARVEST 


brings out more concentrated attention and harder 
work, but causes less fatigue. The obvious utility of 
mental labor directed to a practical end increases the 
interest the pupils take in their work, and stimulates 
them to effective effort. To use a good tool or machine 
and get the results it is competent to produce when in 
skillful hands, is vastly more interesting than reading 
or hearing about the uses of such a tool or machine. 
Whenever, by the use of observational and concrete 
methods, the pupils’ power of attention and of concen- 
trated effort is developed, that power of attention once 
acquired can be exercised in other subjects. This 
principle holds true not only of manual or bodily labor 
but also of games and sports, and of coGperation in 
rhythmical movements like dancing. “The power of 
concentrated attention won in carpentry, turning, forg- 
ing, or farm work is easily transferred to work in read- 
ing, writing, and ciphering, or at a later stage in history, 
literature, and civics; so that the reduction in the 
so-called academic studies made to allow the introduc- 
tion of observational studies need not result in less 
attainment in the academic studies themselves. 

For this great improvement in the conduct of Ameri- 
can secondary schools a good deal of preparation has 
already been made. The new schools of mechanic arts, 
the trade schools, the various endowed institutes for 
giving a sound training in applied science, and such 
institutions as the Hampton Institute and Tuskegee 
Institute are showing how to learn by actual seeing, 
hearing, touching, and doing, instead of by reading and 


CHANGES NEEDED IN EDUCATION 105 


committing to memory. They have proved that the 
mental powers, as well as the bodily powers, are 
strongly developed by the kind of instruction they 
give; so nobody need apprehend that reduced atten- 
tion to memory subjects, with increased attention to the 
training of the senses, the muscles, and the nerves, 
will result in a smaller capacity for sound thinking and 
for the exercise of an animating good-will. 

It is not the secondary school alone which needs to be 
reformed ; the elementary school needs to set a different 
standard of attainment, not lower or easier, but, rather, 
higher and harder: a standard in which the training of 
the senses shall be an important element. 

If the elementary and secondary schools served well 
boys and girls from six to eighteen years of age, the 
main reform would, in time, be accomplished. It 1s 
but a small percentage of the youth of the country that 
go to the colleges and the higher technical schools; and 
the parents of this small percentage are often able to 
provide their children with opportunities for securing, 
outside of their systematic education, a well-co6rdinated 
use of all their senses and nerves, such as a violinist, 
organist, pilot, locomotive engineer, or sharpshooter 
requires. The educational publicist must keep in mind 
the interests of the ninety-five per cent of the children, 
rather than those of the five per cent; for it is on the 
wise treatment of the mass of the population during 
youth that a modern democracy must rely for assuring 
the public health, prosperity, and happiness. 

If the educational material and method of instruction 


106 A LATE HARVEST 


were right, the training given in the grades would 
be just as good for the children who leave school at 
fourteen as for those who go on till eighteen, and the 
training in the high school would be equally appropriate 
for pupils who do not go to college as for those who do. 
The progressive sense-training from beginning to end of 
systematic education is desirable for all pupils, what- 
ever their destination in after life, and should prepare 
every pupil for his best entrance on earning a livelihood, 
at whatever age that necessity is to come upon him. 
It should be the same with the language and history 
studies in every public-school programme. At every 
stage, or in every grade, they should be suitable for 
every pupil, no matter what his destination. Flexibility 
and adaptation to individual needs would still be neces- 
sary in the programmes, first, in order to enable the 
individual pupil to concentrate on the studies he prefers 
and excels in, and secondly to enable pupils of different 
capacity to advance at different rates. 

The adoption of these principles would solve justly 
problems in the American tax-supported system of 
public education which have been in debate for 
generations. 

It must not be imagined that any advocate of more 
sense training in education expects to diminish the 
exercise of the reasoning powers or of the motive powers 
which distinguish man from the other animals, or to 
impair man’s faith in the spiritual unity of the world, or 
his sense of duty toward fellow men, or his sympathies 
with them. The devotees of natural and physical sci- 


CHANGES NEEDED IN EDUCATION 107 


ence during the last one hundred and fifty years have 
not shown themselves inferior to any other class of men 
in their power to reason and to will, and have shown 
themselves superior to any other class of men in the 
value or worth to society of the product of those powers. 
The men who have done most for the human race since 
the nineteenth century began, through the right use of 
their reason, imagination, and will, are the men of 
science, the artists, and the skilled craftsmen, not the 
metaphysicians, the orators, the historians, or the rulers. 
In modern times the most beneficent of the rulers have 
been men who shared in some degree the new scientific 
spirit, and the same is true of the metaphysicians. As 
to the real poets, teachers of religion, and other men of 
genius, their best work has the scientific quality of 
precision and truthfulness; and their rhetorical or 
oratorical work is only their second best. The best 
poetry of the last three centuries perfectly illustrates 
this general truth. Shakespeare wrote : — 


I know a bank whereon the wild thyme grows. 


The florists now tell us that thyme will not thrive 
except on a bank. George Herbert wrote: — 
Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright; 
The bridal of the earth and sky, 
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night, 
For thou must die. 
Precision of statement could not go further; thought 
and word are perfectly accurate. Emerson said to the 
rhodora : — 


The selfsame Power that brought me there brought you. 


108 A LATE HARVEST 


A more accurate description of the universal Providence 
could not be given. Even martial poetry often possesses 
the same absolute accuracy : — 
O Tiber, Father Tiber, 
To whom the Romans pray, 


A Roman’s life, a Roman’s arms, 


Take thou in charge this day! 


Cannon to right of them, 
Cannon to left of them, 
Cannon in front of them 
Volleyed and thundered; 
Stormed at with shot and shell, 
Boldly they rode and well, 
Into the jaws of Death, 
Into the mouth of Hell 
Rode the six hundred. 


When human emotions are to be stirred, and human 
wills inspired, it is the accurate, perfectly true state- 
ment which moves most, and lasts longest : — 


Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay 
down his life for his friends. 


The most exact, complete, satisfying, and influential 
description of true neighborliness in all literature is the 
parable of the Good Samaritan : — 


Which of these three, thinkest thou, proved neighbor unto 
him that fell among the robbers? And he said, He that 
showed mercy on him. And Jesus said unto him, Go and do 
thou likewise. 


It is an important lesson to be drawn from the Great 
War that under the passionate excitements and tre- 


CHANGES NEEDED IN EDUCATION tog 


mendous strains of the widespread disaster the medical 
profession and the nurses of all countries are holding 
firmly to that exact definition of the neighbor, and are 
obeying strictly the command, “Do thou likewise.” 
These are men and women who have received thorough 
training of the senses without suffering any loss of 
quick sympathy or of humane devotion. 

Rhetorical exaggeration, paradox, hyperbole, and 
rhapsody doubtless have their uses in moving to im- 
mediate action masses of ordinary men and women; 
but they are not the finest weapons of the teacher and 
moralist. 

Speaks for itself the fact, 


As unrelenting Nature leaves 
Her every act! 


PROTECTION AGAINST IGNORANCE! 


THE operations of the American people during the 
war with Germany, in trying to recruit and train quickly 
a large army and navy, and keep them fit to fight as 
well as any other national army or navy or better than 
any, brought to light many defects in the education and 
the health and vigor of the population, especially, of 
course, among young men. The draft also revealed an 
amount of illiteracy and bodily incapacity among young 
men between twenty-one and thirty-one which sur- 
prised and mortified everybody. These bodily and 
mental defects were bad enough in time of war; but 
most persons now see that they are even worse in time 
of peace, through their effects on the productive in- 
dustries of the country, and hence on the comfort and 
happiness of the entire people. 

Everybody sees now that to cure and to prevent 
illiteracy are national interests of the liveliest sort, which 
ought not to be left to States or municipalities alone; 
so that effective steps will probably be taken to prevent 
illiteracy in the future by codperative action in the 
National Congress, State Legislatures, and Boards of 
Education for States, counties, and cities or towns. 
Even in the Southern States, which had high percent- 
ages of illiteracy because of the scanty appropriations 
of public money for negro schools, improvements in the 


1From The Nation’s Business, February 1921 


PROTECTION AGAINST IGNORANCE 111 


application of educational appropriations and in their 
amount are already discernible; and it cannot be 
doubted that there will ensue all over the country a 
greater liberality of expenditure on the free elementary 
and secondary schools. 

If we should be forced into another war, we must not 
find in our army or navy thousands of men who can- 
not understand orders or communicate with their com- 
rades. Neither do we wish to find again that a quarter 
part of the millions of young men drafted for the army 
or navy have bodily defects which disqualify them for 
service as soldiers or sailors. Furthermore, we realize 
that such bodily defectives are not the men needed in 
the industrial armies. 

All business men, bankers, manufacturers, or traders, 
and especially all employers of large bodies of “hands,” 
now realize that wage-earners in general and those 
“hands” in particular need to be self-directed by ready 
mental powers and an active good-will. All parents, 
even the most ignorant, feel that the best thing they 
can do for their children is to secure for them a sensible 
education through as many years as the family budget 
can afford; but they wish the public schools to supply 
an education which will unquestionably enable their 
children to earn a good living when adults and to 
make serviceable citizens. Hence the educational 
ambition of the American people among all classes is 
sure to be higher in the immediate future than it 
has ever been before. The main question to-day is, 
therefore, how intelligently shall the efforts of the 


T19 A LATE HARVEST 


people be directed toward the satisfaction of their 
educational desires and needs? 

The first step in the improvement of the American 
schools is the introduction of universal physical training 
for both boys and girls from six to eighteen years of age. 
The programme should be comprehensive and flexible, 
so that the needs of different types of children and 
different individual pupils can be met. It should include 
the means of remedying defects and malformations as 
well as of developing normal bodies. It should include 
exercises which might fairly be called drills, but many 
more which would properly be called games or sports. 
Except in extreme weather most of the exercises should 
be conducted in the open air. Carriage, posture, gait, 
rhythmical movements, and team-play should be 
covered. With the introduction of universal physical 
training should go the universal employment of physi- 
cians and nurses for incessant diagnostic and preventive 
work in schools of every description. 

The faithful and intelligent administration of a sound 
programme of physical training in all American schools, 
public and private, elementary and secondary, is so 
intensely a national as distinguished from a local inter- 
est, that the programme should be prescribed by the 
national Bureau of Education, or some analogous 
Bureau or Commission; and the execution of the pro- 
gramme should be incessantly supervised by inspectors 
appointed and paid by the National Government. 
Further, the National Government might properly and 
wisely pay to State, county, or municipal educational 


PROTECTION AGAINST IGNORANCE 113 


authorities, or to the trustees or owners of private 
schools, a small sum —a dollar perhaps — annually 
for each pupil well trained under the prescribed pro- 
gramme for one year, as determined by the national 
inspectors. When universal physical training has been 
well carried on for twenty years, an immense improve- 
ment will be seen not only in the aspect of the popula- 
tion as respects posture, relation of weight to height, 
and muscular development, but also in their comfort, 
health, and productiveness at daily labor. 

Universal physical training, combined with medical 
inspection and nursing service in all schools, will in 
time remedy in great measure the grave bodily defects 
in the population. Now for the mental defects. What 
are they? Can schooling remedy them? 

The main defects are plain enough. Most Americans, 
educated or uneducated, rich or poor, young or old, 
except the men well trained for the medical, the artistic, 
or the scientific professions, cannot see or hear straight, 
make an accurate record of what they have just seen or 
heard, remember exactly for an hour what they suppose 
themselves to have seen or heard, or draw the just, 
limited inference from premises— true or false — 
which they accept. 

If an educated American, engaged in business or in 
the professions called learned, has fortunately acquired 
the capacity to do any of these things, the chances are 
that he owes his unusual power not to his school or 
college, or to anything in his formal education, but to 
sports or other outside pursuits, or to companionship 


114 A LATE HARVEST 


with some older person who interested him in con- 
genial occupations and showed him how to work hard 
at them, or to the discipline with which his mode 
of earning his livelihood provided him. As a rule, 
American schools have not imparted to their pupils 
any skill of eye, ear, or hand. 

Again, twentieth-century Americans, educated and 
uneducated alike, manifest a capacity for gregarious 
excitement which for the time being destroys the judg- 
ment and often leads to foolish action. This tendency 
is manifested in political conventions, labor-union 
meetings, “‘drives”’ for multifarious objects, religious 
revivals, stock exchanges with their preposterous ru- 
mors, and public ball-games. It produces long-continued 
screaming or howling and other irrational demonstra- 
tions. These manifestations of bodily and mental 
instability in throngs have increased rapidly within the 
past twenty-five years, and are probably among the 
untoward results of the strenuous, agitated, hurrying 
life which most Americans have lately been living, 
speeded up by telegraphs, telephones, express trains, 
the automobile, and rapid machinery in general. 

Under the excitements of the war in Europe many 
Americans, both men and women, have become more 
credulous than they used to be, particularly if the 
rumors or opinions which come to them fall in with 
their own habitual impressions and wishes. Telegraphs, 
telephones, and the daily press are largely responsible 
for this increase of irrational credulity. The news- 
papers are mainly filled with hastily gathered so-called 


PROTECTION AGAINST IGNORANCE 115 


news and hastily written comments on that confused 
mass of guesses and assertions. Reporters, correspond- 
ents, contributors, and editors all write in haste with 
little chance for consideration, mostly on reports 
received over electric wires or through the ether from 
men who have no time to discriminate between facts 
and fancies, and have an interest in reporting at length 
inventions, suppositions, and gossip, whenever facts 
are scarce. The daily press, therefore, stimulates in 
millions of people the herd-tendency to common emo- 
tional impulses and simultaneous action on impulses, 
and furnishes infinite material for eager acceptance by 
credulous minds. 

Of course, this credulity in the human race is a very 
old story, as the persistent acceptance of myths and 
foolish tales all down the centuries abundantly illus- 
trates ; but it is an interesting observation that) popular 
education, in the form heretofore administered, seems 
not to have diminished much the credulity of the masses 
of mankind. At any rate, under conditions of world 
suffering and dread, fatuous credulity is prevalent and 
highly mischievous. 

During the war, wages and prices in all American 
industries went up with a sort of stirring whirl, which 
took effect over the whole country. Profits in most 
businesses increased in the same intoxicating way. The 
Armistice came when extravagant expenditure had 
become common in all classes of American society, but 
most in the class of wage-earners, who finding them- 
selves in possession of undreamed-of incomes, took to 


116 A LATE HARVEST 


buying costly foods, clothing, furniture, and jewelry. 
It was again a case of gregarious irrational excitement. 

The present fall in prices is another case of the same 
sort. Producers, consumers, and wholesale and retail 
dealers suddenly became alarmed and uncertain of the 
future, and most people ceased to buy except for press- 
ing needs. It is the fashion to explain or interpret such 
multitudinous common actions and reactions by the 
phrase, “‘class psychology”; but this term covers 
nothing more than the common mental impulse of the 
herd without exercise of any reasoning faculty or sober 
will-power. 

Can education remedy such defects as these in a 
whole people? It cannot immediately ; it can by steady 
work on a whole generation, if sound educational 
methods be employed. Let us turn to the consideration 
of those methods. They will be found to be compara- 
tively new inventions, but yet not wholly untried. 

The new methods depend for success on the personal 
force and sympathetic quality of the teacher, and his 
own comprehension of the methods, and therefore re- 
quire a fine breed of teachers on a new scale; but they 
may be expressed in rules or formule as follows: 

Enlist the interest of every pupil in every school — 
public or private, elementary or secondary — in his 
daily tasks, in order to get from him hard, persistent, 
and willing work. Only through interest in work comes 
power of mental application, and in due course success 
and content in productive labor — labor which, how- 
ever, can never be free from tiresome routine or from 





PROTECTION AGAINST IGNORANCE 117 


oft-repeated exertions. The too common opinion, that 
there is no useful training except in unattractive or 
repulsive subjects or practices, is just the opposite of 
the truth for either child or adult. In this world, stern 
as well as beautiful, it is quite unnecessary to invent 
hardness or obstacles for any human being. 

Relate every lesson to something in the life of the 
child; so that he may see the application and usefulness 
of the lesson, and how it concerns him. 

Teach all subjects, wherever possible, from actual 
objects, to be accurately observed and described by the 
pupils themselves. Cultivate every hour in every child 
the power to see and describe accurately. 

Make the training of the senses a prime object 
every day. 

Teach every child to draw, model, sing, and read 
music. Encourage all pupils who show unusual capac- 
ity in any of these directions to develop their gifts 
assiduously both in and out of school hours. 

Stimulate every pupil to active participation in every 
school exercise by looking, listening, speaking, drawing, 
and writing himself. Each pupil should be active, not 
passive, alert, not dawdling, led or piloted, not driven, 
but always learning the value of codperative discipline. 

Teach groups of subjects together in their natural 
and inevitable relations. For example, teach arithmetic, 
algebra, and geometry together from beginning to end. 
Do the same for economics, government, and sociology, 
and for history, biography, geography, and travel. 
Associate reading, spelling, and composition day by 


118 A LATE HARVEST 


day, and make sure that every child sees the object of 
having his own compositions correctly spelled and 
legibly written. 

Teach chemistry, physics, biology, and geology all 
together every week throughout the entire course 
(twelve years); because these subjects are generally 
found working in intimate association 1n most natural 
processes of growth, decay, creation, or extinction, and 
are separable only for advanced pupils who need to 
understand the man-made theories and imaginings 
which have proved serviceable guides to fruitful 
experimentation and research. 

The weekly programme should provide every pupil 
with frequent opportunities to describe before teacher 
and class something he has enjoyed seeing or reading. 
Occasionally the pupils who excel in accurate and vivid 
narration or description should have the privilege of 
addressing the whole school assembly. 

Make sure by adequate provisions in the programme 
that every pupil has a fair chance at the proper stage 
to learn, in the laboratory method, the elements of 
agriculture, dietetics, cooking, and hygiene, every girl 
to acquire also the other domestic arts, and every boy 
the elements of some manual trade — by preference 
one common in the school’s locality. The instruction in 
hygiene should include community hygiene, or the 
defenses of society against the diseases and degra- 
dations consequent upon ignorance, moral debility, 
poverty, and vice. 

To make room for the new subjects, reduce class 
work and the size of classes, lengthen the school day, 


PROTECTION AGAINST IGNORANCE 119 


and shorten the present summer vacation. These 
changes are for the benefit, physical and spiritual, of all 
children and all parents. 

Increase individual work. Aim at variety in pupils’ 
attainments and in rate of promotion, and therefore at 
frequent sortings and shiftings among the pupils. A 
uniform or averaged product should bring emphatic 
condemnation on any school. 

Give every pupil abundant opportunities to judge 
evidence, to determine facts, and to discriminate be- 
tween facts and fancies. 

Use in schools such stimulating competition as both 
children and adults use in sports and games to increase 
their enjoyment of them. 

Keep the atmosphere of every school charged with 
the master sentiments of love, hope, and duty. Keep 
out fear and selfishness. 

The schools thus planned and conducted will not be 
vocational or trade schools. They will not be mechanic- 
arts schools. They will teach only subjects that every 
child ought to have opportunity to learn before it is 
sixteen years old, subjects that will serve well the child 
grown up, whatever its occupation. The pupils will 
learn to read, write, spell, and cipher much better than 
they do in the existing schools, and a larger proportion 
of the graduates will become in after life what may 
properly be called cultivated men and women. Best 
of all, the children will enjoy their school life, and 
prefer school time to vacation. Later, they will 
help to make wiser and happier the life of the 
community in which they settle. 


120 A LATE HARVEST 


It is plain that to carry these principles into practice 
in all American schools from bottom to top will require 
many years, much more money than the people have 
heretofore been accustomed to spend on the education 
of the children, and much effort to train by the hundred 
thousand a new kind of teacher. The colleges and uni- 
versities of the country should systematically urge these 
principles on the attention of the American public, espe- 
cially the women’s colleges, because an immense major- 
ity of American school teachers are women, and also 
because mothers generally have more to do than fathers 
with their children’s training. 

To promote schools of the sort above described will 
be a businesslike undertaking for leading business men 
all over the country. 


AMERICAN EDUCATION SINCE THE 
CIVIL WAR} 


Ir is the fashion to-day among hasty and confident 
writers for the newspapers, magazines, and popular 
booklets to assert that modern civilization has failed, 
and is going the way of the Assyrian, Egyptian, Greek, 
and Roman empires; that the world is in chaos and 
must be made anew after a period of anarchy and 
suffering. These writers seem never to have perceived, 
or to have forgotten, that new moral and juridical 
forces have come into play since Magna Charta, the 
Protestant Reformation, and the landing of the Pilgrims 
and that all the ancient civilizations were founded on 
slavery, peonage, or serfdom — monstrous wrongs and 
evils which have now disappeared in the countries called 
civilized. Among American writers of this sort there 
are not a few who declare loudly that American educa- 
tion is a failure, and illustrate this mortifying proposi- 
tion with a few facts and more speculations. The blame 
for this alleged unfortunate condition of the American 
people is variously distributed among parents, teachers, 
school administrators, school boards, and college and 
university faculties and presidents. Some of these 
writers appear to have cloudy visions of remedies for 


1 Address prepared for the sixth commencement convocation of 
Rice Institute, Houston, Texas, June 6, 192% Reprinted in The Rice 
Institute Pamphlet, Vol. 1X, No. 1. 


122 A LATE HARVEST 


this deplorable failure in the United States of the princi- 
pal safeguard of democracy; but most of them, like 
critics and cynics in general, dwell much more on the 
existing evils than on their remedies. 

active part in the development of American education 
from 1854 to the present day; and the strongest con- 
‘viction I have derived from this long survey is that the 
improvement of American education, from top to 
bottom, from the kindergarten through the professional 
school, during these sixty-seven years is in high degree 
encouraging and hopeful. This development has not 
been steady during the two generations of men, but 
rather in waves, and at various speeds. Moreover, the 
waves of educational progress, like ocean waves, are 
often long prepared and come from far. The most 
rapid development has taken place since the open- 
ing of the Great War in Europe, being one of the hap- 
piest consequences of the entry of the United States 
into that war, and of the prodigious efforts made by 
the entire people and their government to take an 
effective part in it. 

It is my purpose in this address to point out some of 
the important steps in the total development. 

In 1854,nearly all schools, elementary and secondary, 
and nearly all colleges had fixed programmes through 
which every pupil was to be conducted. Little attention 
could be paid to the individual child, except sometimes 
in small rural schools where an exceptional teacher had 
to deal with only a small group of children of various 


EDUCATION SINCE THE CIVIL WAR 123 


ages between five and eighteen. Even from such schools, 
with a term of perhaps only thirteen weeks in winter, 
the sometimes competent college undergraduate was 
disappearing as teacher, his place being taken, at the 
best, by some girl graduate of a State normal school, 
and at the worst, by some young woman who could 
barely read, write, and cipher. In urban communities, 
girl graduates of normal schools were already in pos- 
session of the elementary schools and of large parts of 
the secondary schools, their work being supervised by 
principals, superintendents, and Boards conservative 
by nature and training, and aiming to make the school 
an effective factory, standardized and smooth-running, 
with a product characterized rather by certified uni- 
formity than by natural diversity. Even the colleges 
had usually four-year prescribed courses of study, of 
limited range and elementary quality, with no advanced 
studies accessible to any student however ambitious 
and competent. Neither school nor college paid atten- 
tion to training the senses, to the acquisition of any 
skill, or to implanting in the pupil’s or student’s mind 
the method of the inductive philosophy or the love of 
reading. The discipline in both school and college was 
of the driving, not of the leading, sort. 

Into this rigid and comparatively fruitless system 
came gradually, between 1865 and 1885, the individual 
election of studies by the student or pupil, first for 
college students and then for the pupils of secondary 
schools, and the adoption of the underlying principle 
that hard and happy work is only to be obtained from 


124 A LATE HARVEST 


the young on subjects which interest the pupil and 
induce in him eager, spontaneous activities. Interest, 
choice, and activity had arrived as the motive powers 
in organized education. ,In order to discover and gratify 
the bent of each pupil at school the number of subjects 
taught in both elementary and secondary schools had 
to be increased; and in order to enable the college 
student to follow his bent far, college studies had to be 
multiplied in number and increased in range. For these 
purposes a new breed of teachers had to be born and 
trained —a slow process. By 1880, a considerable 
number of this new breed had been raised; so that 
college Faculties began to exhibit a considerable im- 
provement in respect to both the quality and the num- 
ber of their members, an improvement which is still 
going on. This improvement alone is worth the fifty 
years of patient effort it has cost. 

A corresponding improvement in the teachers of ele- 
mentary and secondary schools it was not reasonable to 
expect. The great body of teachers in the elementary - 
schools are young women who on the average do not 
remain long in the calling. They have to be trained by 
the thousand in the high and normal schools, which as 
a rule give little opportunity for the development of 
unusual individual qualities or capacities. The college 

and university Faculties ought to be recruited from 
among persons of unusual promise and often of unusual 
attainments; and it is the prime duty of college and 
university presidents to be constantly searching for 
unusual personalities. The principals and superintend- 


EDUCATION SINCE THE CIVIL WAR 125 


ents of schools had at that period small chance to dis- 
cover and engage such personalities; and indeed they 
are not much better off to-day. 

I recall with a shiver the very imperfect means I 
possessed in the 70’s for discovering the kind of man 
that I knew ought to be found for any professorship 
in Harvard University. I had to depend on my own 
acquaintance with scholarly men, on casual contacts 
with such persons in travel and at meetings of learned 
societies, and on advice sought by letter from eminent 
scholars. Of course there had been leading American 
scholars and specialists in earlier generations, like 
Nathaniel Bowditch of The Navigator, Joseph Story in 
law, George B. Emerson in trees and shrubs, David 
Humphreys Storer on fishes, George Ticknor in Spanish 
literature, and William H. Prescott and George Ban- 
croft in history. In the middle of that century there 
was a small group of men of high merit as investigators 
and authors from whom advice could be obtained, such 
as Asa Gray the botanist, Jeffries Wyman the anatomist 
and physiologist, and Louis Agassiz the zodlogist at 
Harvard, Benjamin Silliman and James D. Dana at 
Yale, Maury and the three brothers Rogers of Virginia, 
and Joseph Henry the physicist of Princeton and the 
Smithsonian. But these great men were isolated as 
teachers; so that their influence was felt, not by large 
groups of students, but mainly by disciples whose pre- 
vious training had often been unsystematic and peculiar. 
In those days, too, the numerous associations or socie- 
ties of men learned in a single branch of knowledge, 


126 A LATE HARVEST 


such as the classics, law, history, chemistry, physics, 
engineering, architecture, and physiography, had not 
come into existence. Since 1890, these societies have 
furnished university presidents and heads of depart- 
ments with much valuable information about their 
leading members, and have revealed to intelligent 
inquirers the young men of promise. 

It took decades to develop even in the strongest 
universities what are now called “Departments,” as 
of Latin, mathematics, or physics, and more decades 
still to develop what are now called “Divisions,” in 
which several Departments are united, as, for instance, 
the Division of ancient languages, or of modern lan- 
guages, or of history, government, and economics. So 
long as it was the practice to have only one professor 
for each subject — which was the common way — it 
was of course impossible to create a department. When, 
therefore, one looks at the existing organization of any 
considerable American college or university to-day, he 
cannot fail to observe that a wonderful improvement 
has taken place in the American university as an instru- 
ment of teaching, research, and social progress since the 
close of the Civil War. 

During the period under consideration (1865-90), 
American education made great gains in respect to 
training men for the professions, old and new. Prior to 
1870 there were no examinations for admission to pro- 
fessional schools in the United States, and, what was 
worse, there were no effective examinations for gradua- 
tion. The teaching of law and medicine in those days 


EDUCATION SINCE THE CIVIL WAR 127 


was probably as good at Harvard University as at any 
other American university, and the quality of law and 
medical students at Harvard was as good as anywhere; 
but the Law Faculty gave the degree of Bachelor of 
Laws to any man who had paid three term bills (cover- 
ing eighteen months) and had not been very irregular 
in attending lectures. When I asked in the Medical 
Faculty of 1870 if it would be possible to substitute an 
hour’s written examination for the five minutes’ oral 
examination (a five-minute interview with the pro- 
fessor of each of the nine principal subjects then taught 
in the School) at the examinations for graduation, the 
answer came promptly from the Head of the Faculty: 
“Written examinations are impossible in the Medical 
School. A majority of the students cannot write well 
enough.” Anyone who contrasts that state of things 
with the conditions of admission and graduation in 
schools of law and medicine to-day in all parts of the 
United States will be satisfied that improvements in 
American training for the professions have taken place 
which are already of immeasurable value, and which 
promise in the future great gains in all sorts of profes- 
sional practice, and therefore of professional influence 
and service. The improvements are quite as striking in 
the newer professions, like engineering, architecture, 
landscape architecture, and dentistry, as they are in 
the older, like divinity, law, medicine, and teaching. 
Another great advance in American education since 
the Civil War is the development of separate colleges for 
women, and the increased resort of young women to 


128 A UAL EAR iS i 


the coeducational institutions of higher education. At 
first, the colleges for women were restricted or hampered 
in their development, because the object of Faculties 
and students alike seemed to be to prove that young 
women could study advantageously all the subjects 
which had made the staple of instruction in colleges for 
men, and that young women could in those subjects 
attain success quite equal to that which young men had 
previously exhibited. Just as the introduction of new 
methods of teaching and a new kind of teacher had been 
restricted in colleges and universities for men by lack 
of money, so in the separate colleges for women their 
development was greatly hindered by lack of income. 
Indeed, this restriction is not yet overcome, although 
considerable endowments have lately been raised for 
several women’s colleges. As results of the creation 
and growth of colleges for women in the United States, 
searchers for women teachers can find better trained 
women for higher places in American schools and 
colleges, and women have gained access in small num- 
bers to all the older professions called learned and to 
several of the new ones. They have also won positions 
— generally secondary ones — in various sorts of scien- 
tific research, including biological, physical, chemical, 
medical, and astronomical. Anyone who can recall how 
limited and inaccessible the education of girls was in 
the United States — as also in Europe — before the 
Civil War, will appreciate that the training of women 
for family, social, industrial, and professional life has 
made enormous gains in the United States within the 


EDUCATION SINCE THE CIVIL WAR 129 


last fifty years. Much gain is still to come; for the 
women students in colleges and universities are now 
free to pursue the studies of their choice or their most 
appropriate studies, being no longer under the neces- 
sity of demonstrating that young women can deal 
successfully with all the subjects which young men used 
to deal with. 

If, then, there are spots in which American education 
has failed under new stresses, there are large regions 
in which it has made immense gains during the past 
two generations. 

In Europe and America alike improvements in popu- 
lar education have always spread from the top down- 
ward and outward, from Luther, Melanchthon, Locke, 
Milton, Montaigne, Kant, Franklin, Mann, Emerson, 
Spencer, Froebel, Pestalozzi, Seguin, and their like, 
and from the higher institutions of education to the 
lower. The United States has supplied a very interest- 
ing illustration of this general fact. At the meeting in 
1891 of the National Council of Education, an interior 
committee of the National Education Association, a 
committee organized at a previous meeting made a 
valuable report through their chairman, Mr. James H. 
Baker, then Principal of the Denver High School, on 
the general subject of uniformity in school pro- 
grammes and in requirements for admission to college. 
That committee was continued, and was authorized to 
procure a conference on the subject of uniformity during 
the meeting of the National Council in 1892, the con- 
ference to consist of representatives of leading colleges 


130 A LATE HARVEST 


and secondary schools in different parts of the country. 
This conference was well selected and duly summoned, 
and held a series of meetings at Saratoga, N. Y., July 
7-9, 1892. The discussions at this meeting resulted in 
the following specific recommendations which the con- 
ference sent to the National Council of Education, 
then in session : — 


1. That a conference be held of school and college teachers 
of each principal subject which enters into the programmes of 
secondary schools in the United States and into the require- 
ments for admission to college, each conference to consider the 
proper limits of its subject in schools, the best methods of 
instruction, and the most desirable allotment of time for the 
subject. 

2. That a committee be appointed with authority to select 
the members of these conferences, and to arrange their meet- 
ings, the results of all the conferences to be reported to this 
central committee. 

3. That this Committee consist of the following ten persons 
named, who were the Commissioner of Education at Washing- 
ton, D. C., four university presidents, three principals of high 
schools, one professor in a college, and the headmaster of a 
well-endowed preparatory school. 


These recommendations of the conference were 
adopted first by the National Council of Education, 
and then by the Directors of the National Education 
Association. Those Directors made an appropriation 
of $2500 toward defraying the expenses of the proposed 
conferences — an unprecedented performance on the 
part of the Association. Every man named on the 


EDUCATION SINCE THE CIVIL WAR 131 


Committee of Ten accepted his appointment; and the 
Committee met at Columbia College, New York City, 
November 9-11, 1892. In preparation for this meeting 
a table had been prepared by means of a prolonged 
correspondence with the principals of selected secondary 
schools in various parts of the country, a table which 
showed conclusively: first, that the total number of 
subjects taught in these secondary schools was nearly 
forty, thirteen of which, however, were found in only 
a few schools; secondly, that many of these subjects 
were taught for such short periods that little training 
could be derived from them; and, thirdly, that the time 
allotted to the same subject in the different schools 
varied widely for the older subjects as well as for the 
newer. This picture was striking and in some respects 
surprising. It indicated the probable scope and nature 
of the conferences’ work. 

The Committee of Ten decided on November Io, 
1892, to organize conferences on the following subjects: 
(1) Latin; (2) Greek; (3) English; (4) other modern 
languages; (5) mathematics; (6) physics, astronomy, 
and chemistry; (7) natural history, including botany, 
zoology, and physiology ; (8) history, civil government, 
and political economy; and (g) geography (physical 
geography, geology, and mineralogy), each conference 
to consist of ten members. The Committee then 
proceeded to select the members of each of these 
conferences, ninety in all, and to provide about thirty 
substitutes. It was fortunately constituted for this 
function because all the members had wide personal 


132 A LATE HARVEST 


acquaintance among the professors and teachers of the 
country, and good knowledge of colleges and secondary | 
schools throughout the country. They made their selec- 
tions with due regard to the scholarship and experi- 
ence of the gentlemen named, to the fair division of 
the members between colleges on the one hand and 
schools on the other, and to the proper geographical 
distribution of the total membership. The Committee 
then asked every conference to consider : — 


1. At what age should the study which is the subject of the 
conference be first introduced in a school course extending 
from the age of six years to eighteen years? 

2. How many hours a week, for how many years, should 
be devoted to it? 

3. How many hours a week, for how many years, should be 
devoted to it in the ordinary high school period ? 

4. What topics or parts of the subject should be covered 
during the whole course — six to eighteen years of age? 

5. What topics or parts of the subject may best be reserved 
for the last four years? 

6. In what form and to what extent should the subject 
enter into college requirements for admission ? 

7. Should the subject be treated differently for pupils who 
are going to college, for those who are going to scientific or 
technical school, and for those who are presumably going to 
neither ? 

8. At what stage, if ever, should this differentiation begin ? 

g. Can any description be given of the best method of 
teaching this subject throughout the school course? 

1o. Can any description be given of the best mode of 
testing attainments in this subject at college admission 
eXaminations ? 


EDUCATION SINCE THE CIVIL WAR 133 


11. Ifa college or university permit a division of the admis- 
sion examinations between two years, can the best limit be- 
tween the preliminary and the final examinations be defined? 


This set of questions touched all the points which 
had been raised in the discussions about secondary 
education during the two preceding decades, and antici- 
pated most of those of the two succeeding decades. 

The Committee further voted that it was expedient 
that the conferences on Greek and Latin meet at the 
same place. 

Finally, it left all further questions of detail to the 
Chairman with full power. 

The nine conferences met on December 28, 1892, at 
seven different places with eighty-eight members pres- 
ent, of whom forty-six were in the service of colleges or 
universities, forty-one in the service of schools, and one 
was a Government official. All the conferences sat for 
three days, and their discussions were frank, earnest, 
and thorough; but in every conference an extraordinary 
unity of opinion was arrived at. Only two conferences 
yielded minority reports, namely, the conference on 
physics, astronomy, and chemistry, and the conference 
on geography; and in the first case, the dissenting 
opinions touched only one important point — out of 
many — in the report of the majority. 

By October 1 the reports of the conferences had all 
been printed, after revision by the Chairmen of the con- 
ferences respectively, and had been distributed to the 
members of the Committee of Ten, together with a 


134 A LATE HARVEST 


preliminary draft of a report for the Committee. With 
the aid of comments and suggestions received from 
members of the Committee, a second draft of this report 
was made ready in print as the groundwork of the 
deliberations of the Committee at their final. meeting, 
which was held at Columbia College, November 8-11, 
1893. The vigorous discussions at this prolonged meet- 
ing resulted in a thorough revision of the second draft. 

The report of the Committee of Ten and the nine 
reports of the conferences immediately engaged the 
attention of thousands of teachers in colleges and 
schools all over the country, and became objects of 
close attention in all teachers’ meetings and in all 
college Faculties. William T. Harris, then Commis- 
sioner of Education but earlier Superintendent of 
Schools at St. Louis and always an educational philoso- 
pher, wrote to the Secretary of the Interior, Hon. Hoke 
Smith, on December 8, 1893, in a letter intended to 
accomplish Secretary Smith’s expressed wish that the 
reports be printed as one of the documents of the 
Bureau of Education, as follows : — 


The recommendations of this report will draw the attention 
of great numbers of teachers to the question of educational 
values, and this will lead to a better understanding of what 
the pupil should study to gain the most from his work in 
school. In this respect I consider this the most important 
educational document ever published in this country. 


Whoever reads to-day the reports of the nine confer- 
ences will find in them all the suggestions which have 


POUCATION SINCE: THE CIVIT WAR? 135 


led to educational progress during the past twenty- 
eight years. They are fruitful still. He will find there 
many suggestions as to the means of interesting every 
pupil in every school, public or private, elementary or 
secondary, in his daily work, and how to get from every 
pupil 4ard work but willing; how to make the teaching 
of every subject concrete, and to relate it to something 
in the life of the child or the youth, so that he may see 
the application and usefulness of each lesson, and how 
it concerns him; how to teach subjects in groups and 
not singly in a detached way, as, for example, how to 
teach together arithmetic, algebra, and geometry, or 
history, government, and economics, or geography, 
history, and biography; or again, how to teach English 
in connection with every other subject on the pro- 
gramme, and so to develop the capacity and desire to 
narrate or describe accurately and vividly. 

The reports of the nine conferences declare the princi- 
ples.on which election of studies should be introduced 
into secondary schools as well as into colleges; but it 
was left for the Committee of Ten to indicate in tabular 
form the manner of introducing those principles. It 
was the Committee of Ten which constructed, as guides 
for school principals and superintendents, a table ex- 
hibiting the amount of instruction — estimated by the 
number of weekly periods assigned to each subject — 
to be given in a secondary school during each year 
of a four-year course, on the supposition that the 
recommendations of the conferences were all to be 
carried out; and also a table showing how to give effect 


136 A LATE HARVEST 


to the fundamental conception of all the conferences, 
namely, that all the subjects which make a part of the 
secondary school course should be taught consecutively 
enough and extensively enough to make every subject 
yield the training it is fitted to yield. The Committee 
also prepared four working-programmes for a second- 
ary school which they recommended for trial wherever 
the secondary school period is limited to four years. 
These programmes are called Classical, Latin-Scien- 
tific, Modern Languages, and English. All four may 
be combined in one programme with options by subject 
for the pupil. The most striking differences in the four 
programmes will be found to be the relative amounts 
of time given to foreign languages. The most important 
principle in programme-making which all the nine 
conferences advocate is as follows: — 


Every subject which is taught at all in the secondary 
schools should be taught in the same way and to the same 
extent to every pupil so long as he pursues it, no matter what 
the probable destination of the pupil may be, or at what point 
his education is to cease. 


This was at the time a revolutionary proposal, and 
therefore one sure to encounter many obstacles, theo- 
retical and practical, general and local. Nevertheless, 
every intelligent superintendent or principal in the 
country has been trying since 1893 to apply that prin- 
ciple in his system or his school, as fast and as far as 
local public opinion and local school resources permitted. 
The resulting improvements are already great; but 
much remains to be done. 


EDUCATION SINCE THE CIVIL WAR 137 


It is important to notice the limits of this fundamental 
principle. It does not affirm that all pupils should study 
the same subjects, or that all pupils should pursue any 
given subject the same length of time. On the contrary, 
the conferences and the Committee of Ten believed that 
the utmost elasticity of programme and _ variety_ of 
subject should exist in every secondary school, in order 
that the individual pupil might enjoy an adequate 
freedom. It was the main object of the appointment of 
the Committee of Ten to procure, if possible, a higher 
degree of uniformity in school programmes and in re- 
quirements for admission to college than then existed; 
and therefore it was for the Committee to consider 
with special care what kind of uniformity was desirable 
and what undesirable. The ninety-nine teachers who 
constituted the Committee of Ten and its conferences 
said unanimously that uniformity should apply to the 
method of teaching and to the selection of the topics in 
each subject taught at all in a secondary school, but 
not to the selection of subjects by the individual pupil 
or to the length of time that the individual pupil should 
pursue each subject.. The programmes laid down by 
the Committee of Ten provide the indispensable unt- 
formity and the equally indispensable liberty. For each 
institution or each local school system the limitations 
on liberty proceed from the inevitable limitations on 
expenditure. 

It was a striking fact that “ninety-eight teachers, 
intimately concerned either with the actual work of 
American secondary schools or with the results of that 


¢ 


138 A LATE HARVEST 


work as they appear in students who come to college, 
unanimously declare (1892) that every subject which 
is taught at all in a secondary school should be taught 
in the same way and to the same extent to every pupil 

SO long as he pursues it, no matter what the probable 
destination of the pupil may be, or at what point his 
education is to cease.” ! This statement 1s still having 
a strong effect on current discussions about the point 
at which determinations of the probable life career 
should be allowed to determine the school career. A 
democracy naturally desires to postpone as much as 
possible the partings of ways. 

° There was another point in which the recommenda- 
tions of the conferences closely resembled each other. 
They all, except the Greek conference, seemed to wish 
to get their subjects studied earlier than they were then. 
This general desire caused the conferences to deal con- 
siderably with the programmes of elementary schools. 
Indeed, some of the most interesting suggestions made 
by the conferences related to the primary and grammar 
schools. It was very plain also that the teachers inter- 
ested in the subjects comparatively new in secondary 
schools, namely, English, the modern languages, chem- 
\istry, physics, natural history, and history wished to 
get their subjects placed on a perfect equality with the 
old subjects in school programmes, and believed that 
the interests of education demanded this equality. 
They believed that the new subjects could be made 
equal in dignity and difficulty to the old subjects, and 

1 From the Report of the Committee of Ten. 


EDUCATION SINCE THE CIVIL WAR 139 


therefore equal in training-power. They also believed 
that they could be made equal, if not superior, in inter- 
est or power to attract and hold the attention of pupils. 
They did not ask that all subjects receive equal atten- 
tion in a given school or from a given pupil. Evidently 
to the establishment of an equality among subjects 
an approximate equality of time-allotment is essential, 
hence the importance of the function of the Committee 
of Ten in suggesting time-allotments. No compre- 
hensive policy in regard to the comparative treatment 
of different subjects can be properly carried out without 
careful attention to the subject of time-allotments. 
The report of the Committee of Ten pointed out that, 
on adding up all the claims for time on secondary school 
programmes which resulted from the combined recom- 
mendations of the conferences, the total amount was 
by no means out of the question for many schools, even 
if their pecuniary resources could not be increased. 
Indeed, it appeared that this sum total was exceeded 
in several American secondary schools already, and 
among these schools were to be found public schools as 
well as endowed academies. These facts were a welcome 
surprise to most of the members of the Committee of 
Ten. It should be borne in mind, however, that in any 
school which is competent to provide the number of 
weekly school periods demanded by all the conferences, 
selection of studies for the individual pupil becomes 
inevitable. Of course, any school can make the selec- 
tion by establishing different four-year courses for 
pupils of different destinations. The uniformity which 


140 A LATE HARVEST 


is desirable to procure all over the country is uniform- 
ity of teaching-methods by subject and of the se- 
quence of subjects by year. Such uniformity would 
greatly improve the relations between secondary 
schools and colleges, and would also diminish the losses 
which now result from the frequent transfers of pupils 
from country to city, or from one city to another over 
the broad national area. 

There is another important improvement in Ameri- 
can education which may be hoped for as a result of 
that degree of uniformity in school programmes which 
the Committee of Ten recommended; and already some 
gains have been made in this respect. Among the 
colleges, universities, technical schools, and agricultural 
schools of the country there has existed a considerable 
variety of admission requirements by groups. A candi- 
date for admission who proposes to study for the degree 
of Bachelor of Arts must conform to higher admission 
requirements than a candidate for the degree of Bache- 
lor of Philosophy or Bachelor of Science. The degree 
of Bachelor of Agricultural Science may be obtained 
on still lower admission-terms. Yet there is little dif- 
ference of age in the candidates for these various 
degrees. The great majority of American colleges and 
universities admit to the freshman class, or indeed to a 
higher class, on the certificates of the schools in which 
the candidate was prepared. 

The adoption of the recommendations made by the 
nine conferences and the Committee of Ten in respect 
to secondary-school programmes, the methods of teach- 


EDUCATION SINCE THE CIVIL WAR 141 


ing each subject, and the establishment of equality in 
dignity and time-allotment among the various sub- 
jects taught in secondary schools would contribute very 
much to the abolition in American higher education of 
the evils just described. It should make no difference 
to a college or scientific school whether a given candi- 
date for admission had studied one set of eight or nine 
subjects recommended by the conferences for a. four- 
year course, or another set of equal value., Much prog- 
ress has been made in this matter since 1893; but it is 
obvious that much remains to be done before the equal- 
ity of the Latin-Scientific, Modern Languages, and 
English programmes with the Classical can be estab- 
lished in practice. The thing desirable is that close 
connection be established between the secondary 
schools and the institutions of higher education by | 
making requirements for admission to the higher match 
requirements for graduation at the lower. 

The nine conference reports are full of hope and 
promise for the future. Whoever reads them to-day 
with an open mind cannot fail to see that great improve- 
ments in American education have resulted from their 
suggestions, worked out or applied by thousands of 
teachers and school and college officials by slow degrees 
and painful steps. The achievements of these teachers 
and officials are great already and will stimulate their 
successors in the same fine enterprise. 


It remains to consider the improvements in American 
education which have taken place, or are in near view, 


142 A LATE HARVEST 


since the United States went to war with Germany in 
April, 1917, that is, during the four most pregnant 
years in American history. Congress and the Adminis- 
tration united in a strenuous endeavor to create a huge 
national army quickly by draft. The examinations 
which drafted men were required to undergo revealed 
two facts about the mass of the population included in 
the draft, which took the people of the United States 
and its Government by surprise, and made them both 
eager for remedies. The first was the amount of illiter- 
acy. The second was the amount of venereal disease. 
Two prompt conclusions were arrived at. First, that 
the education of the entire people could not be left 
exclusively in the hands of the States and the munici- 
palities, but must be treated as a fundamental national 
interest. Secondly, that the entire army and navy must 
be instructed, in their camps and cantonments, in the 
means of avoiding and preventing venereal diseases, in 
order that the army in France might be kept fit to fight. 
Some guidance to this latter resolution had come 
earlier from the official reports from Henry L. Stimson, 
Secretary of War in President Taft’s Cabinet, who had 
published the fact that the American regular army of 
that day suffered more from venereal diseases than any 
other army in the world; and from the action of Com- 
manders of the National Guard which made part of 
the force that in 1912 guarded the Mexican boundary, 
these commanders having shown how to protect their 
men from the portable villages of prostitutes which 
were promptly established in the immediate vicinity of 


EDUCATION SINCE THE CIVIL WAR 143 


the camps, and with which the officers of the regular 
army had no disposition to interfere. The instruction 
administered to the army was of the crudest sort ; for it 
was given to the men through a dictation by young 
officers from small hastily prepared manuals, which, 
however, were written by competent persons. The 
camps and cantonments in this country were energeti- 
cally defended against both brothel and saloon, on the 
ground that each fed victims to the other. These meas- 
ures proved remarkably effective; and the American 
people drew the conclusion that it was not only desir- 
able but feasible to prevent venereal diseases in the 
mass of the population on a great scale. Hence a resolu- 
tion on their part that the needed instruction on this 
subject should be given thereafter in all American 
schools, as part of a universal course on biology and 
public health. The accomplishment of this purpose is 
well under way, though by no means completed. 

At the same time many non-governmental agencies 
set to work to contend against the evil of illiteracy. 
The Young Men’s Christian Association became active 
in the work of teaching recent immigrants from alien 
races the English language and the elements of civics, 
winning to their classes both young men and adults. 
Numerous cosmopolitan clubs were organized in factory 
towns in the eastern part of the country, which devoted 
themselves to similar kinds of teaching. The chief em- 
phasis was placed on the teaching of the English lan- 
guage, and during the years which have elapsed since 
the Armistice, much success has attended these efforts. 


144 A LATE HARVEST 


This success is a strong encouragement to the idea 
dawning among thinking Americans that popular 
education should by no means be confined to children 
under fourteen or under eighteen, or to young people 
under twenty-four, but should be carried forward by 
evening schools, Saturday classes, and vacation schools, 
after regular attendance at school or college has ceased. 
Immediate results appear in the raising of the age of 
compulsory attendance at school; in the creation of the 
junior high school; of the evening classes in technical 
institutes, for boys and young men who are already at 
work in trades; and in the many offerings by universi- 
ties of short courses in medicine, business administra- 
tion, teaching, and engineering specialties for men who 
have already entered on the practice of their profes- 
sions. The national government, the states, and various 
institutions of higher education are already offering 
numerous courses of this nature for adults. Progress in 
this direction is greatly stimulated by the new dangers 
that threaten democracy. The labor troubles, for ex- 
ample, proceed from a lack of intelligence and rea- 
soning power in large bodies of voters, who may be 
consumers, employers, or employees. The recent enact- 
ments about the tariff have similar sources in the 
ignorance and lack of reasoning power among mil- 
lions of our people. The only way to overcome these 
evils which result from the general lack of trained 
senses, practice in reasoning, and trustworthy in- 
formation, is to strengthen the education of both 
the young and the adult. 


EDUCATION SINCE THE CIVIL WAR 145 


A small amount of schooling was enough for the 
voters of town meetings in the New England of two 
hundred years ago, or one hundred years ago. It is not 
enough for the voters of continental United States 
to-day, who are called upon to act by their votes, or by 
the votes of the representatives they select, on national 
and international problems which are both strange and 
vast — too vast indeed for experienced statesmen as 
well as for the populace. Even in the comparatively 
simple field of military and naval operations, the Great 
War produced no military or naval commander compe- 
tent to deal with the vast extensions of area and ex- 
traordinary novelties in modern warfare. In the same 
way no religion, Confucian, Buddhist, Brahman, Mo- 
hammedan, or Christian, has developed during the past 
seven years any new strong hold, either on its own 
people or the other peoples. At this moment all the 
Christian churches, denominations, or sects are wonder- 
ing how they can recover their former hold on their 
several bodies or groups. Every secular or religious 
organization and every state or nation seems to need 
more intelligence, more vision, and more sense of duty 
toward the high calls of honor and conscience. There is 
but one road upward —‘more education, and wiser. 

The national government has for many years main- 
tained scientific establishments for national uses, such 
as the United States Coast Survey, the Naval Observa- 
tory, the Boards for maintaining a national quarantine, 
and the various bureaus in the Departments of Agri- 
culture, the Interior, and the Treasury, which deal with 


146 A LATE HARVEST 


conservation, forestry, parks, and irrigation. The war 
added greatly to the number of applied-science com- 
missions in the government service, such as the com- 
missions on explosive engines, aeroplanes, and poison 
gas. Some of these scientific activities have survived 
the Armistice, particularly those which affect the edu- 
cation of the people and the public health. Besides the 
national government, several states have taken on new 
functions 1n support of popular education. For example, 
Massachusetts has passed a carefully considered law 
which helps the schools of rural communities practically 
at the expense of the urban. Large appropriations have 
already been made by Congress, to be distributed by a 
national health board or commission among the states 
which are prepared to codperate with the government 
in treating and preventing diseases. Although national 
aid to universal physical training 1s not yet consum- 
mated, it is plain that before long the national govern- 
ment will distribute such aid, and the states carry the 
beneficent plan into execution. This great improve- 
ment, though suggested by the experience of the nation 
at war, is really a great step forward toward national 
health and happiness, and industrial efficiency. 

The national efficiency in time of war called for the 
service of experts in great variety, chemists, physicists, 
biologists, psychologists, and engineers; and the whole 
people acquired a new sense of the value of experts, and 
of the institutions which train them. There have re- 
sulted extensive improvements in those institutions. A 
curious case of carrying over into peace times a war 


EDUCATION SINCE THE CIVIL WAR 147 


invention, is the use of the psychological tests applied 
to the classification of recruits for the army and navy 
to the classification of school children. 

Since 1914 financial and manufacturing corporations 
have manifested an increasing desire for graduates of 
colleges or technical schools as managers, superintend- 
ents, and employment agents. Many of these corpora- 
tions affirm that the kind of managers and superintend- 
ents now needed cannot be brought up in the works, 
but must have received an appropriate training in good 
secondary schools, colleges, technical schools, or the 
graduate departments of universities. 

Seeing these things, intelligent parents keep their 
children at school as long as they can, instead of putting 
them to earn money for the family as soon as the law 
allows, or before. Hence the extraordinary resort to 
colleges and technical schools since the Armistice, and 
the vigorous efforts to raise new endowments for these 
institutions, many of which have been highly successful. 

These achievements and tendencies loudly proclaim 
that secondary schools and all the institutions of higher 
education have made great gains since the twentieth 
century opened, and are going to make many more as 
the twentieth century advances. 

It remains to mention the remarkable educational 
enterprise on which the democratic government of the 
United States has embarked since it went to war with 
the autocratic government of Germany — the Prohibi- 
tion enterprise. Prohibitory legislation began in the 
States, first in Maine, later in Kansas, and later still in 


148 A LATE HARVEST 


some Southern States. The national movement began 
with the war; and national scope and purpose were 
necessary to its success. It rests solidly on a Constitu- 
tional Amendment adopted by large majorities, and on 
Acts of Congress which commended themselves to both 
political parties, and secured strong majorities. It is 
a hopeful effort to teach the entire people that alcoholic 
drinks never do any good, usually do harm, often 
destroy family happiness, and as a rule impair produc- 
tive efficiency in the industries of the country. This 
teaching, to be effectual, must ultimately be based on 
prolonged experience with prohibitive legislation. It 
involves continuous and universal instruction in the 
schools and homes of the rising generation — instruc- 
tion both scientific and ethical. It also involves a con- 
siderable advance in the ethics of the medical and legal 
professions, and in their sense of responsibility to the 
community. No other national government, demo- 
cratic or autocratic, has ever attempted such a vast 
philanthropic and educational enterprise. 

All men and women who believe that education is the 
best safeguard of democracy may rest content with the 
progress of education in the United States since the 


Civil War. 


LABOR PROBLEMS 





THE ROAD TO INDUSTRIAL PEACE}? 


Tue American Government and people have gone to 
war with Germany without having secured any mitiga- 
tion of the industrial warfare which has become chronic 
in the country, and exists to-day in more dangerous 
forms than ever before. The opposing parties — Labor 
on the one side and Capital on the other — are better 
organized than ever before ; so that Labor is more aggres- 
sive and Capital more resistant than they were twenty 
years ago, or even ten years ago. Labor has found legis- 
latures more and more compliant to its demands; and 
Capital finds its means of resisting Labor more and more 
hampered by the action of legislatures and civil adminis- 
trations. The hasty enactment by Congress of a crude 
law demanded by the four railway Brotherhoods in 
August last was a betrayal of the interests of the people 
as a whole. No American and no European legislature 
has heretofore made such a discreditable submission to 
selfish and insolent demands of trades-unions as the 
American Congress made a year ago. So ill-considered 
was the law passed at the imperative order of the rail- 
way Brotherhoods that several of the objects which the 
union leaders intended to accomplish thereby were not 
accomplished ; and its only immediate effect was to raise 
the wages of some railway employees. There is no differ- 
ence between the two political parties in respect to 


1From The Nation’s Business, August 1917. 


152 A LATE HARVEST 


fishing for the Labor vote. The campaign committees 
of both parties have for years printed the union label 
on all their letterheads, circulars, and leaflets, and 
every “practical” politician who is a candidate for 
office does the same. 

Since the country has gone to war with Germany 
there have been numerous strikes and threats of striking 
in industries which produce munitions and supplies for 
the army and navy and the acutely needed means of 
transportation by land and water; and no legislation to 
prevent such strikes, or even strikes in industries which 
produce or transport foods and fuel, has been suggested 
in any American legislature. In Great Britain the stress 
of war has brought about temporary agreements be- 
tween the Government and the labor unions concerning 
work in munition factories, shipyards, transportation 
companies, and other means of production or transpor- 
tation indispensable for the efficient conduct of the war ; 
but even these agreements have not been uniformly 
observed. The labor leaders agreed to abandon during 
the war the right to strike, and to suspend their favorite 
policies of closed shop and limited output; but neverthe- 
less numerous strikes have occurred, and many work- 
men refuse to work steadily, because they are able at the 
existing high wages to support themselves and their 
families by working four days a week, or four days and a 
half, instead of five days and ahalf. In other words, the 
industrial strife is continued in Great Britain, though 
with some mitigations, in spite of the great sufferings of 
the British people at the hands of Germany. Moreover, 


THE ROAD TO INDUSTRIAL PEACE 153 


the unions have only suspended the enforcement of their 
habitual policies for the duration of the war. At the 
return of peace they mean to restore the limited output 
and the closed shop, in spite of the obvious fact that 
these policies will make it impossible to maintain British 
industrial productiveness at the level of the war times, 
however sorely it may need to be maintained in order to 
enable Great Britain to repair the losses of the war and 
to meet the new competitions of the changed commer- 
cial world. As to the American trades-unions, they make 
no secret of their intention to maintain their restrictive 
and crippling policies, war or no war, and to strengthen 
their control of American industries by taking advantage 
of the necessities of the Government and the people while 
engaged in a critical and exhausting war. If they suc- 
ceed, the United States will neither be able to carry on 
war effectively nor to maintain creditable standing in 
the international industrial competition which will set 
in after the close of the war. 

Responsibility for the present threatening condition 
of the industrial strife must not be laid on the trades- 
unions alone. The employers or managers have also 
been much to blame. They have often shown themselves 
arbitrary, inconsiderate, and greedy; they have often 
been shortsighted and unintelligent; sacrificing, for ex- 
ample, nonunion men to union men for some immediate 
advantage or convenience, even when the nonunion men 
had come to their aid during a strike; they have often 
underrated the intelligence and character of their work- 
men, and so failed to confide to them their proper share 


154 A LATE HARVEST 


in the discipline of the works; they have been quick to 
resent complaints on the part of their employees, and 
slow to deal with complaints fairly ; and they have tried 
to keep from them all knowledge of the buying and sell- 
ing departments and of the accounting. Even when 
employing firms and corporations have paid for a fair 
amount of “‘welfare work,” they have often done it in a 
patronizing or charitable way which self-respecting em- 
ployees are apt to resent. Few employers have been 
willing to regard their relation to their employees as a 
genuine partnership. These errors, omissions, and sins 
on the part of employers are largely responsible for the 
acute state of the industrial warfare. Labor and Capital 
must divide between them the blame for the present 
unhappy and dangerous condition of the great manu- 
facturing industries, but no one can say in what 
exact proportion. 

The reasonable conclusion from these facts is that ina 
democracy the mass of the people cannot rely on their 
legislatures or their executives to protect them from the 
hardships which the industrial strife inflicts, especially 
when the two monopolies — Labor and Capital — com- 
bine temporarily to reduce output and raise costs and 
therefore prices. Such combinations between Labor and 
Capital are never long-lived; but when these two com- 
batants do make a truce, and combine to get and divide 
“all the traffic will bear,” they inflict great hardships an 
the mass of the people. Yet the people take no effective 
measures to prevent such combinations, or indeed to 
resist the steady encroachment of the trades-unions on 
the rights of the people at large. 


THE ROAD TO INDUSTRIAL PEACE 155 


What is the reason for this inaction on the part of the 
American people and their representatives, and on the 
part also of the British people and their representatives ? 
The main reason is that a great many people in the free 
nations have come to the conclusion that the mere pay- 
ment of weekly wages by employers, who constitute a 
small minority of the population, to employees, who 
canstitute the great majority, does not afford a basis for 
a just and humane organization of industrial society, 
because it does not bring about identity of motive for 
fidelity and zeal in employers and employed alike, or 
community of interest and feeling between them. When, 
therefore, the employees say they are entitled to receive 
a larger share of the value of the product of the factory, 
machine-shop, mill, or mine in which they work than the 
weekly pay-roll represents, and the employer maintains 
that, since he takes all the risks of the business and has 
no certain income from it, he is entitled to all the profit 
there is in the years when there is a profit, high or low, 
since all the profit is due to his intelligence, foresight, 
and enterprise, many disinterested and benevolent 
people sympathize with the employees rather than with 
the employer. 

It is this profound dissatisfaction with the bare 
wage system which causes much of the unrest among 
the working people in the large industries of the manu- 
facturing nations, and prevents efficient action by legis- 
latures and courts against the wrong and injurious 
practices of the trades-unions. Careful observers also 
perceive that in the long run and large scale Capital is 
stronger than Labor in fight — unless interfered with by 


156 A LATE HARVEST 


government — and therefore tend to support Labor in 
each special contest as ‘“‘the under dog.”’ Other excellent 
and far-seeing people have come to the conclusion that 
there ought to be a more even division between Labor 
and Capital of the proceeds of their combined efforts, 
and that the welfare and happiness of the entire com- 
munity would be promoted by a more equitable division. 
Another reason for the inaction of the great majority 
of the American people in seeking remedies for the in- 
dustrial warfare is that they do not understand the moral 
and material destructiveness of some of the trades- 
unions’ policies. They do not understand that the closed 
shop is an effective weapon of the labor union for the 
establishment of a complete monopoly of the labor in a 
given trade. They donot know that the policy of limited 
output not only interferes with individual liberty, but 
demoralizes every worker who puts it into practice. 
They do not realize that a boycott is an illegal attack on 
independent producers or merchants in order to compel 
them to submit to union rules concerning industrial pro- 
duction. They do not know that the union label is next 
to the closed shop the most effective weapon for securing 
to the labor union in any trade a complete monopoly. 
In general, the people of a free country have a cordial 
hatred of monopolies, because monopolies limit their 
liberty in buying and selling. Americans as a rule dislike 
very much to find that there is only one person or 
organization of whom they can buy an article they want, 
or only one person or organization to whom they can sell 
what they themselves produce. Nevertheless, neither 


THE ROAD TO INDUSTRIAL PEACE +157 


the Americans nor the British have taken effectual means 
to prevent monopolies of labor in the great industries of 
the two countries. They see that the labar unions, since 
they entered about a hundred years ago upon the indus- 
trial warfare, have accomplished much good for the 
laboring class; that they have gradually shortened the 
unreasonably long hours of labor to which the laboring 
man formerly submitted; that they have succeeded in 
raising the wages of men and women who spend their 
lives in laborious, monotonous, or unwholesome tasks; 
that they have contributed to prevent the overworking, 
or premature working, of women and children in fac- 
tories. They do not see that the present policies and 
efforts of the labor unions are now directed to the selfish 
ends of a comparatively small class; and that the or- 
ganizations of Labor, natural and indeed indispensable 
as they are in trades as in professions, and permanently 
useful as they might be, are now advocating policies 
and cherishing aims which are not consistent with the 
common welfare. 

Out of this industrial strife is it possible that an en- 
during peace can now be brought forth? It is clear that 
real public happiness cannot possibly grow out of it; and 
yet it is the object of ademocracy to promote the highest 
welfare and happiness of the multitude. A democracy 
reasonably endeavors to secure for each individual citi- 
zen liberty under law, stability of employment, the hope 
of improving his lot, and an active good will of the in- 
dividual toward others and of others toward him. Each 
of these conditions of public happiness is indispensable. 


158 A LATE HARVEST 


Liberty is indispensable; for the love of freedom is so 
ingrained in modern civilized society that the abridg- 
ment of personal freedom is everywhere recognized as an 
obstacle to the winning of either private or public happi- 
ness. Again, a just and enjoyable social state depends on 
the permanent settlement of families where they can live 
in security and freedom, with their breadwinners earn- 
ing steadily in stable occupations the means of liveli- 
hood and education. Nomad life cannot yield real social 
welfare in the modern sense, no matter whether the 
wandering be from hunting-ground to hunting-ground, 
or pasture to pasture, or factory to factory. 

The hope of improving one’s lot is indispensable. If 
the social structure is built in permanent, impermeable 
layers, as in the feudal system, or the Indian caste sys- 
tem, this hope cannot spring up, or can animate only a 
few. And good will is indispensable. Public happiness 
is impossible in a state in which employers and employed, 
rich and poor, educated and uneducated, are in a chronic 
condition of mutual distrust. 

If we abandon all expectation of putting an end to the 
industrial warfare through legislation or any other politi- 
cal action, to what social forces can we turn in the hope 
of abating or mitigating the industrial strife and its un- 
happy consequences ? Promising action in that direction 
is even now open alike to employers, employees, and 
consumers, within the permitted range of private action, 
and without the necessity of procuring any special aid 
from legislatures, courts, or governmental administra- 
tions; but the initiative in such action must be taken by 


THE ROAD TO INDUSTRIAL PEACE 159 


the employers. It is for them to introduce into the in- 
dustries which they direct the changes which would - 
enable their employees by their skill, energy, and fidelity 
to attain to a reasonable moral freedom in daily labor, 
to a settled home with steady work, to an expectation 
of improvement in their lot, to a sentiment of loyalty 
to the person, firm, or corporation which employs them, 
and to a state of good will between themselves and their 
employer. These motives and influences are strong 
toward developing character and winning happiness. 
They characterize all the higher occupations of men, 
such as the learned and scientific professions, the whole 
business of education, and the functions of the father 
and mother of a family. Real content in the daily labor 
is the object to be aimed at in all efforts for putting an 
end to the industrial warfare. One would suppose from 
the incessant efforts of the labor unions to reduce the 
number of working hours in the day that labor was a 
curse. On the contrary, willingness to labor steadily and 
the capacity to do so are the foundations of the superi- 
ority of civilized mankind over savage. It is the spirit in 
which he works steadily, and the conditions — whole- 
some or unwholesome — under which the earning of a 
livelihood is accomplished which make the difference be- 
tween the happy workman and the unhappy, no matter 
what the occupation. A large part of the continuous 
education of a normal human being ought to be derived 
from the daily work through which he gains his liveli- 
hood. If that work is habitually done in a discontented 
and disloyal spirit it will have no sound educative effect, 


160 A LATE HARVEST 


but on the contrary will degrade the worker, and dry up 
some of the best sources in his nature of satisfaction and 
happiness. 

The immediate problem before the managers of the 
great factory, mining, and transportation industries of 
the modern world is to determine how the good will of — 
the men and women at work can be increased. Profit- 
sharing is the best method of bringing to bear on the 
employee the same motives that govern the employer 
and giving him a sustained interest in his daily work. 
There is no single method of profit-sharing which can be 
used in all businesses, and the method is not applicable 
at all to industries which are not conducted for a profit, 
such as government works, public schools, hospitals, dis- 
pensaries and asylums, colleges and universities, and 
domestic service. Each business must have a profit- 
sharing method of its own, and each factory, mine, or 
railroad must contrive that method of profit-sharing 
which will best develop among its employees that good 
will which is necessary to content in the kind of labor 
which it requires. The division of profits should come 
once or twice a year as a clean addition to the wages the 
employee has received, and the amount of the dividend 
should be a considerable percentage of the wages paid to 
each individual during the year or the six months. A 
percentage of five to eight per cent a year — which is 
usually satisfactory to owners or shareholders — will 
not affect operatives or mechanics strongly enough to 
yield all the good effects of profit-sharing. This percent- 
age need not be steady, that is, without change from 


THE ROAD TO INDUSTRIAL PEACE 161 


year to year. On the contrary, a percentage which varies 
with the success of the business — sometimes high, some- 
times low — is more attractive and influential than a 
steady, moderate percentage. It is not necessary that all 
the employees of a given works should receive a profit 
dividend. No one ought to receive it who has not been 
at least a year in the service of the firm or company ; and 
no one should receive it who has not been continuously 
in service during the period for which the profit dividend 
is declared, unless indeed he be absent on account of 
temporary illness. Under a successful profit-sharing sys- 
tem the employee will feel that he is in reality working 
as a partner in the business, and that his wages are: 
merely an advance of a portion of his earnings, made to 
him because he cannot, like the employer, wait a year or 
six months for the whole of his share. Under this system, 
the motive of the employee for doing his best and help- 
ing to make the industry successful is precisely the same 
as that of the manager or owner, and from this identity 
of motive results a good will which increases to a degree 
truly wonderful the efficiency of the establishment. 

Both parties to an efficient production of salable goods 
understand that the divisible profits are to be deter- 
mined in the future, in the coming twelve months or six 
months, by faithful work on the part of all hands. The 
men feel that they want to do a good day’s work be- 
cause they are not only going to get their wages for 
that day’s work, but they are also going to get a profit 
which will be large in proportion to the success of 
the factory as a whole. 


162 A LATE HARVEST 


The effect of profit-sharing by a portion of the work- 
men employed in a given mill or factory is very strong 
on the men who are not yet profit-sharers. It is the 
interest of all the profit-sharers that all the workers in 
the factory should do a good day’s work; and they do 
their best to procure that result. They watch, stimulate, 
and help those members of the corps who are not yet 
profit-sharers. They also are interested to see that per- 
sons who are not profitable to the works be not retained 
in the employ ; because such persons diminish the profits 
of the profit-sharers. 

It is the interest of the profit-sharers to stop all wastes 
in the factory. That is a state of mind which no rise of 
wages without profit-sharing will ever bring about. 
Woarkmen on a profit-sharing basis will do disagreeable 
jobs contentedly, if assured that they are more profit- 
able than the more agreeable jobs. Profit-sharers will 
also suggest to owners improvements in the methods or 
machinery of the business, if they think they have 
discovered any. 

Profit-sharing cannot be successfully applied in any 
business or industry that is not tolerably continuous and 
stable, and as a rule successful. It implies on the part of 
the workmen confidence in the good faith, discretion, 
and business capacity of the manager or owner ; and this 
confidence must be the result of the business experience 
and character of the manager or owner, understood and 
appreciated by the workmen. Profit-sharing can be 
applied to large numbers of employees or to small 
numbers, to the whole body of employees or to a part of 


THE ROAD TO INDUSTRIAL PEACE 163 


it, and to men or to women. Some successful schemes 
apply only to the sales department, others only to the 
operatives and not to the office employees. All profit- 
sharers will resist what they consider unnecessary en- 
largements of the working force. Women profit-sharers 
will overwork themselves in times of stress, particularly 
in seasonal industries, unless restrained. 

These advantages of profit-sharing result from per- 
manent good qualities in civilized mankind, which can 
be trusted to work well universally ; but profit-sharing 
cannot bring about with certainty good relations between 
employer and employed without the aid of other just 
and humane methods in the conduct of the business con- 
cerned. Thus, the actual working force in any industry, 
large or small, ought to have a share in the discipline of 
the works, that is, in making and enforcing the rules 
under which workmen live. This codperative manage- 
ment is easily brought about through a committee on 
which the managers or owners and the working force are 
equally represented. Ample experience in this country 
has already proved that complaints will be properly 
dealt with and adequate discipline maintained by a com- 
mittee so constituted, if the head of the business be wise 
and fair. The workmen elect their representatives on 
the committee and the managers appoint their delegates. 
Success has often been attained when the workmen had 
a majority on the managing committee. The one thing 
essential to success in codperative management is that 
both sides should feel that the codperation is genuine 
and single-minded. Again, British experience during the 


164 A LATE HARVEST 


Great War, and much American experience as well, has 
proved in the amplest manner that what has been called 
welfare work on behalf of the employees in factory in- 
dustries is an indispensable means of procuring high 
efficiency in an industrial establishment, and should be 
steadily carried on as a business method and not a chari- 
table one. This welfare work comprehends watchful at- 
tention to the health and safety of employees, to the 
comfort and wholesomeness of their homes, to their 
schools, churches, playgrounds, clubs, and means of 
entertainment. It should include attention to the site — 
in town or country, city or suburb — of the mill, factory, 
or machine shop, and the physical surroundings of the 
works. It should include also the subdivision of a large 
plant into sections small enough to enable each section 
superintendent to have much personal contact with all 
the employees. In the factory industries there is no sub- 
stitute for the liking of the employees for the owner, 
manager, or superintendent, a liking based on his per- 
sonal knowledge and sympathetic treatment of them 
and their families ; just as in military organizations there 
is no substitute for the attachment of the privates in a 
company or regiment to their immediate commander, or 
for the admiration and confidence that an army feels for 
the commander-in-chief. 

Another adjunct of profit-sharing which develops sta- 
bility, loyalty, and good will in a working force is a pen- 
sion system ; but a pension system cannot be used except 
by a corporation or institution which has a visible dura- 
bility or permanence which all people expect it to main- 


VHES ROAD iO;INDUSTRIAL PEAGE” 165 


tain. It cannot be used by a single owner or group of 
owners who cannot make sure of perpetuity. In solid 
and durable institutions like universities, government 
bureaus, and semipublic corporations which have long 
carried on successfully great transportation systems by 
land or sea, a good pension system has admirable effects 
on the continuous vitality and efficiency of a long-service 
staff; but there are many firms and corporations which 
cannot use it in support of a profit-sharing scheme. 

Still another useful adjunct of profit-sharing is the sale 
at a reduced price of stock of the employing corporation 
to superintendents, foremen, salesmen, and head clerks, 
or indeed to any competent employee who wishes to 
buy. The reduction in price ought to be sufficient to 
cover ordinary fluctuations in the price of the stock. 
This method is applicable, like a pension system, only 
in a durable and presumably profitable business not 
liable to heavy fluctuations in the market price of its 
stock. It has this inconvenience, that if the market price 
does drop much below the price at which the directors 
sold the stock to their employees, the directors may feel 
under obligation to buy the stock back. 

None of these adjuncts to profit-sharing can bring 
industrial peace without the profit-sharing, that is, with- 
out the genuine partnership of Labor with Capital. 

Employers who are thinking of setting up an appro- 
priate profit-sharing plan in their own business should 
clearly understand that the sharing of profits does not 
imply the sharing of losses also. Loss-sharing is ordi- 
narily impossible for wage-earners. Their savings or 


166 A LATE HARVEST 


accumulations are insufficient; so married men and 
men past the prime of life would not be justified in tak- 
ing such risks for their families or for themselves. More- 
over, losses in well-established businesses are usually 
due, not to the workmen, but to the managers, who have 
failed in foresight, judgment, or promptness in adapting 
an old business to new conditions. So far as employees 
are concerned, a year of loss has to be treated as a year 
of no profits. An employer who really believes that 
every partner who shares profits must also share losses 
had better give up all thought of establishing a profit- 
sharing plan in his business. 

Profit-sharing appeals to the best human motives, 
motives which build up the individual and his family, 
and tend to the improvement of a workingman’s con- 
dition in life and that of his wife and children. On the 
other hand, most of the present policies of the labor 
unions, such as the limitation of output, the prohibition 
of zealous labor, the striving for a monopoly of the labor 
in a given trade, and the indifference to industrial wastes 
and losses defeat the play of good motives in human 
nature. Profit-sharing, with codperative management 
and intelligent welfare work, is capable of bringing into 
play in all levels of industrial life the motives which 
develop humane, civilized, and improving conduct and 
character. It gives play to the motive of loyalty without 
which it is difficult to conceive how anybody can work 
happily. 

Finally, it affords the best possible means of pro- 
moting good will between employers and employed; 
and the promotion of that good will is the only funda- 


THE ROAD TO INDUSTRIAL PEACE 167 


mental way to cure the industrial warfare, just as the 
promotion of good will among nations is the ultimate 
means of preventing international warfare. Profit-shar- 
ing prompts men to steady industry, and to fidelity and 
loyalty in work by appealing primarily to love of gain, 
but also to wholesome ambition and family love. These 
are the leading motives of civilized life. 

The owners of a business who should adopt profit- 
sharing with codperative management, welfare work, 
and a pension system would have to look forward to 
their operatives getting a larger share of the profits of 
the business than they now receive on a plain wage 
system; but it does not follow that the owners’ profits 
would shrink. The productiveness of the works might 
easily increase so much under a sound profit-sharing 
system that the earnings of capital and management 
would rise as well as the earnings of labor. Zeal and 
good will on the part of the laborers reduce cost and 
increase product vastly more effectively than any other 
influences. The owners would reap other considerable 
advantages. Their working force would be much more 
stable; their business would be more regular in normal 
times, because of the greater stability of the working 
force ; if conditions changed or new demands arose, their 
business could be modified or transformed rapidly, be- 
cause all the profit-sharers would be eager to main- 
tain the profits of the business, and therefore to make 
quickly all needed transformations. But above all, 
the owners would gain a new and great satisfaction, 
that of codperating heartily with a contented and 
happy body of employees. 


168 A LATE HARVEST 


If the business men of the United States can accam- 
plish in these ways the abolition of the industrial 
warfare, they will give the world another demonstration 
— the war has already given a superb one — that dem- 
ocratic government promotes national efficiency better 
than any other form of government — a demonstration 
which would contribute largely to the freedom and 
happiness of mankind. 


PUBLIC OPINION ABOUT STRIKES! 


Unti recently, the mass of the American people has 
usually felt a general sympathy with working men and 
women who have struck for higher wages, shorter hours, 
or wholesomer conditions of daily work. They have 
commonly believed that for many years the strike was 
the only means on the part of the laboring people of re- 
sistance to intolerable evils which the factory system, 
with steam-driven machinery, introduced first into Eng- 
land and later into the United States. They have be- 
lieved that, on the whole, strikes have done more good 
than harm to the mass of the people, in spite of the seri- 
ous losses and injuries to the whole community which 
invariably accompany them. Until recently, most Ameri- 
can communities, afflicted with a strike in some locally 
important industry, have taken the matter patiently, 
and have desired and promoted a speedy settlement with 
some moderate advantage for the strikers, in spite of the 
frequent lawlessness which strikers have exhibited. 

Within the past six years the opinions and settlements 
of the mass of the American people about strikes have 
been undergoing a remarkable change, slowly at first, 
but lately rapidly. Why? 


In the first place, the whole people have come to see 
that of late the object in view in most strikes is higher 


1 From the Boston Herald, March 7, 19209. 


170 A LATE HARVEST 


pay, not wholesomer or happier conditions of work, and 
that the demand for higher pay recurs at short intervals 
in spite of the following demonstrated facts: — 

1. A good proportion of workmen in trades which 
habitually force higher pay by strikes is investing con- 
siderable savings in Liberty bonds, in savings-bank 
deposits, and the stocks of the companies which employ 
them. Wages must have been therefore high enough to 
permit the frugal-minded to make satisfactory savings. 

2. Thousands of comparatively recent immigrants 
have been sending back to relatives and friends in 
Europe and the Near East, since August 1914, large sav- 
ings made while at work in this country — a perform- 
ance highly to their credit. These remittances amount 
to many millions of dollars, so many, indeed, that they 
have been complained of — unreasonably — as a seri- 
ous drain on the resources of the United States. They 
prove, at any rate, that these alien workmen have been 
earning here much more than they need for their own 
support. 

3. Another fraction of the working people who strike 
at short intervals for more pay have been already receiv- 
ing wages so high that they can give themselves and 
their families all the comforts and luxuries they want in 
the wages they earn in five days or even four days a 
week. Accordingly, they work only five or four days in 
the week, and short days at that. Great Britain has 
suffered much more than America from the diminished 
production which results from this frame of mind among 
miners, mechanics, and operatives of the less intelligent 


PUBLIC OPINION ABOUT STRIKES 171 


and ambitious sort; but this evil is already formidable 
in the United States. 

4. Another large part of the industrial workers of 
America and Great Britain have been demonstrating 
year after year the adequacy of their wages by indulging 
in extraordinary wastefulness and extravagance in their 
personal and family expenditures. This extravagance is 
chiefly exhibited in the purchase of high-priced furni- 
ture, jewelry, pianos, phonographs, gowns, footwear, 
and furs, and in the incessant resort of themselves ‘and 
their families to moving pictures, theatres, and shops for 
candies, drinks, and dear fruits. It cannot be that people 
who spend their money in this way are in any need of 
higher wages. Nevertheless, they keep striking for them. 

These facts tend to convince all sorts of people that 
high wages produce high costs of living quite as distinctly 
and inevitably as high prices of commodities necessitate 
or justify high wages. Hence, the mass of the people are 
getting more critical than they used to be about strikes 
for more pay in the fundamental industries which yield 
the necessaries of life. 

Secondly, a decided majority of the American people 
have of late experienced a new difficulty in owning houses 
and small shops, and in living in houses of their own. On 
account of the exorbitant wages in all the building-trades 
and in some of the trades which supply building-mate- 
rials, innumerable American families find themselves 
obliged to move from their own houses into hired tene- 
ments which are much less desirable as regards space, 
light, air, and the other means of bringing up children 


172 A LATE HARVEST 


ina healthy way. This is a grievous descent in dignity, 
independence, and comfort; and it affects every class in 
urban and suburban communities, and even in small 
towns and villages, except the downright rich. Wher- 
ever a plumber, electrician, gasfitter, painter, furnace- 
and stove-maker, mason, or joiner charges from 80 cents 
to $1.25 an hour, there the American family is forced 
into narrow, crowded, hired quarters; unless by good 
fortune or the gift of nature the householder can himself 
practise two or three of these fundamental trades. This 
degradation of family life is resented by the average 
American family which has children, and induces in 
them serious distrust of the prevailing wage-raising proc- 
esses in trades which have to do with such necessaries 
of life, in the climate of the United States, as shelters, 
fuels, foods, and transportation. The average American 
reflects that high wages in building-trades have at least 
one drawback, for people in other trades or occupa- 
tions — they raise rents, prevent new building, and 
congest the population. 

Thirdly, most Americans have within five years had 
abundant opportunities to observe that high and ever 
higher wages do not in themselves result in larger national 
production or any greater good will between employer 
and employed. Taken in connection with trades-union- 
ism’s teachings on limited output, short hours, and 
“going slow”’ in order to leave more chance for the un- 
employed to get employment, high wages and the inces- 
sant raising of wages now seem to most Americans to 
have no tendency to promote industrial peace, to in- 


PUBLIC OPINION ABOUT STRIKES 173 


crease national production and wealth, or to cultivate 
habits of thrift in the major part of the population. On 
the contrary, the recent results of trades-union doc- 
trine — progressive raising of wages, shortening of hours, 
and strikes — seem to mast industrious and thoughtful 
Americans to result in poor work, less work, and chronic 
discontent in many important industries. Hence, the 
American people by common accord are reconsidering 
their previous attitude toward strikes and toward the 
labor organizations which use strikes to promote that 
domination of all the principal industries to which they 
aspire. 

A great change in strikes and their potential results 
has taken place since the nineteenth century closed. A 
strike used to be directed against a single railroad, 
steamship company, factory, or mine-owner. Its effects 
_ were usually limited to one locality ar to some relatively 
small area. The trades-union organization has now been 
so far perfected and its power so centralized, that a 
nation-wide strike can be called in several of the most 
indispensable industries of the country, such as coal- 
mining or the whole railroad system, for example. 

When the four railroad Brotherhoods forced Congress 
in August 1916, to pass by a given minute on a given day 
the Adamson bill, which established a “basic’”’ eight- 
hour day, the formidable threat they used so successfully 
was that they would tie up the entire railroad trans- 
portation throughout the country. Ever since that note- 
worthy performance, many millions of thinking Amer- 
icans have been considering whether any small group of 


174 A LATE HARVEST 


labor leaders, even if they didlead five hundred thousand 
men, ought to possess such a power over the lives and 
fortunes of the hundred millions of Americans. The 
Adamson law proved to be a law, not to shorten hours, 
but to enable railroad men to earn very high wages by 
working overtime at one-and-a-half or double rates. It 
was to increase the pay of railroad employees that the 
railroad Brotherhoods threatened to stop all American 
industries and trade, and distress all American families 
and institutions of religion, education, and charity which 
depend on the railroads to bring them food and fuel. 
The chances are that sound public opinion in the United 
States has decided already that in the interest of the 
entire community no group or class ought to possess 
such a power. 

American thinking about strikes has also been greatly 
stimulated and altered by the active efforts which the 
American Federation of Labor has lately made to organ- 
ize labor in various callings or occupations which have 
thus far rejected trades-unionism, and to bring the 
unions formed therein under the control of the Federa- 
tion. These efforts have been successful in many cases 
within the last three years; so that the American public 
has seen unions chartered by the Federation among 
musicians, actors, policemen, firemen, engineers for 
pumping public water-supplies,and public-school teach- 
ers; and they have had opportunity to witness the 
effects of strikes in some such occupations or services. 
The prompt effects of strikes by policemen, firemen, and 
engineers employed by public water-boards have con- 


PUBLIC OPINION ABOUT STRIKES 175 


vinced the great majority of the American people that 
strikes are and ought to be inadmissible in such services. 
The movement of American opinion in this direction is 
well-nigh universal. Nevertheless, the recognized leaders 
of organized labor, including the officers of the American 
Federation of Labor and the heads of the railroad 
Brotherhoods, do not accept, as a rule, this verdict of 
public opinion in which many of their own rank and file 
cordially join. Here is a potent reason for some of the 
new reflections among thinking men and women about 
strikes and government by strikes. 

The first industrial conference called by President 
Wilson, which sat from October 6 to October 24, 
1g1g, was called “for the purpose of discussing the labor 
situation in the country and the possibility of formu- 
lating plans for the development of a new relationship 
between capital and labor.” This conference was un- 
fortunately, though perhaps inevitably, organized in 
three groups representing respectively labor, capital, and 
the public; its important committees were constituted 
in like manner. The rules it hastily adopted — they had 
apparently been prepared before the conference met 
by some private committee — prescribed that every 
vote should be taken by groups, and that all three groups 
must concur in every valid decision of the conference. A 
majority of the number of members in any one group 
could therefore prevent action by the conference on any 
subject. 

As a consequence of its original structure and the 
nature of its own rules, the conference never paid even 


176 A LATE HARVEST 


a moment’s attention to “formulating plans for the de- 
velopment of a new relationship between capital and 
labor.” It fought anew over subjects of past conflict be- 
tween capital and labor, the existing steel strike, and 
some other threatened or imminent strikes; but never 
gave a thought to the bringing in of any “new relation- 
ship between capital and labor.” In eighteen days it 
convinced its own members and the public that it was 
an impotent and hopeless assemblage ; and it apparently 
convinced President Wilson that the three-group struc- 
ture of an industrial conference was not a wise or promis- 
ing one. At any rate, he organized his second industrial 
conference in a totally different manner; for it 1s sup- 
posed that all the members of the new conference 
represent the public interests. 

The first conference was broken up on October 23 by 
thedeliberate withdrawal of the labor group in spiteof an 
earnest appeal from the President of the United States 
that the conference continue in session, an appeal written 
from his sick-bed, and urged upon the conference and 
the labor group in particular by the Secretary of the In- 
terior, who was the elected chairman of the conference. 
This action convinced the members of the conference, 
and a large number of other persons interested in indus- 
trial peace, that the American Federation of Labor and 
the four Brotherhoods, as represented by their leaders, 
still cling to the belief that, by means of nation-wide 
strikes in industries which deal with the necessaries of 
life, they can acquire before long a dominating control 
over all the ordinary occupations and interests of the 


PUBLIC OPINION ABOUT STRIKES 177 


mass of the people, and thence over the government it- 
self. With the acquisition of that control would go the 
regulation of wages, hours of labor, and the distribution 
of the products of labor, and hence of family and com- 
munity life. Every citizen, indeed, would be personally 
regulated. 

Needless to say that most Americans do not relish this 
prospect. If reduced to such a hard choice, — they do 
not mean to be, — they would much prefer government 
domination to the domination of the Federation of Labor 
or the four Brotherhoods. 

The group representing capital, on the other hand, 
manifested in a decided majority of its members a pro- 
found distrust of the sincerity and candor of the repre- 
sentatives of labor, individually and as a group. They 
refused assent to every proposition which the labor 
group brought before the conference, however moder- 
ately expressed, and manifested much confidence in the 
combined power of the association of financiers, farmers, 
and manufacturers to defeat the plans of the American 
Federation of Labor and the four railroad Brotherhoods. 
The first paper read to the conference on behalf of the 
capital group gave notice of the combative and inacces- 
sible frame of mind which characterized the group. 
Neither the labor group nor the capital group mani- 
fested any disposition to take up even the preliminary 
discussion of new relations between employers and em- 
ployed. The general committee, whose function it was 
to prepare the measures selected by them for considera- 
tion by the conference, being constituted in the 


178 A LATE HARVEST 


three-group form, never recommended for discussion in 
the conference a single measure relating to the future. 

The proceedings of the President’s first industrial con- 
ference therefore suggest emphatically that in boards or 
tribunals intended to make settlements of industrial dis- 
putes the disputants themselves, far from sitting on the 
bench, should only be represented by counsel of their 
own choosing, and should appear as witnesses only. To 
have suggested that is a real contribution to the cause of 
industrial peace. Another contribution was the revela- 
tion, through several warm declarations made by labor 
members, of the hostility of organized labor to all forms 
of codperative management, such as shop committees, 
company unions, and stated conferences of manager, 
foremen, and elected representatives of the whole body 
of workmeninasingle plant. These methods or measures, 
which are engaging the attention of many progressive 
employers, are anathema to organized labor, or at least 
to the leaders they now recognize. 

The President’s second industrial conference issued 
on December Ig a preliminary statement concerning 
its work up to that date, for which it asked a “‘consider- 
ate study by interested individuals and organizations 
throughout the country.”’ This statement opens with 
a page and a half called “Introduction,” which is ap- 
parently the work of several hands, since the proposals 
and hopes of the conference are stated in different pas- 
sages, not only in different terms, but in a different spirit. 
Thus, it is said that the conference “believes that its 
most important immediate contribution is the sugges- 


PUBLIC OPINION ABOUT STRIKES 179 


tion of practical measures which will serve to avert or 
postpone industrial conflicts,” and that it is “‘going to 
confine itself to the proposal of machinery for the ad- 
justment of disputes.” On the other hand, the con- 
ference also expresses its belief that “‘it is possible to set 
up a more effective series of tribunals for the adjustment 
of disputes than at present exists’’; but before describ- 
ing under Section 2 its plan for boards of inquiry and 
adjustment, it blandly declares that its plan “‘does not 
propose to do away with the ultimate right to strike, to 
discharge, or to maintain the closed or open shop.”’ In 
other words, its plan is not to deal fundamentally and at 
once with the evils which are disturbing the great Amer- 
ican industries and threatening very untimely reduction 
of production, but rather to provide better means than 
any which now exist of settling disputes between capital 
and labor regarded as perpetual antagonists, and at least 
to secure publicity for dangerous disputes before actual 
war on each other and the community shall be permitted 
to break out. Its hope or expectation about the working 
of the tribunals it recommends is that through their 
action “‘the interruption of production shall be delayed.” 

The prime recommendation by the conference is the 
appointment of a national industrial tribunal as a board 
of appeal. This tribunal is to be made up of three 
representatives of employers, three representatives of 
employees, and three persons to be appointed by the 
President as representatives of the public’s interests. 
This is the same structure which made the first indus- 
trial conference a futile body. It is to the last degree 


180 A LATE HARVEST 


unpromising as structure; but hope of its proving useful 
is also much diminished by the provision that its de- 
termination on all disputes, brought before it on appeal, 
shall be by unanimous vote. One man out of the nine 
may therefore defeat action by the tribunal. The first 
industrial conference was broken up by the action of 
the labor group. Now, the three members of the pro- 
posed national industrial tribunal who represent labor 
are to be appointed “‘upon nomination of the Secretary 
of Labor.” Is it not perfectly plain that no decision 
which is adverse to the interests of organized labor 
will ever be made by the proposed national industrial 
tribunal? 

The plan proposes the division of the United States 
into twelve regions, and the appointment by the Presi- 
dent of the United States of one regional chairman for 
each region, who is to represent the public; but the 
national industrial tribunal may at their discretion create 
any number of additional regional boards under vice- 
chairmen. There is no provision that these vice-chair- 
_men should represent the public; and it is apparent that 
a board of nine members composed of three distinct sec- 
tions would have great difficulty in appointing these 
vice-chairmen in a satisfactory way. 

It is proposed that panels of employers and employees 
for each region shall be prepared by the Secretary of 
Commerce and the Secretary of Labor respectively, and 
that these panels shall be approved by the President of 
the United States. No such duty should be imposed on 
the President, unless with a specification of the authority 


PUBLIC OPINION ABOUT STRIKES 181 


to whom the President may delegate this power. These 
panels are to be classified by industries and by crafts. 
This arrangement carries into all the regional boards the 
combative structure of the national industrial tribunal; 
and the conference advises that in these regional boards 
when working as a board of adjustment the determina- 
tion of the board shall be by unanimous vote. 

Every party to an industrial dispute can therefore 
submit its case to the appropriate regional board with 
full assurance that neither the regional board will reach 
unanimously a conclusion adverse to it, nor will the 
national tribunal, when the case is taken before it on 
appeal. Incidentally new and heavy duties are imposed 
on the Secretary of Commerce and the Secretary of 
Labor by the proposed enactments; for the regional 
panels are to be revised annually by those secretaries in 
conference with the employers and employees respec- 
tively of each region. As these panels may become very 
numerous, a new and heavy burden is thus imposed on 
the Departments of Commerce and Labor respectively. 

Fach side will feel sure that it can prevent any adjust- 
ment which is unsatisfactory to itself; for either side can 
prevent a real settlement under the rule requiring una- 
nimity. Nevertheless, some gain for the public might 
result from the existence and use of the regional boards 
and the national tribunal ; because both sides agree when 
they put their case before a regional board that the sub- 
mission of the issue between them for adjustment consti- 
tutes ““an agreement by both sides that they will con- 
tinue, or reéstablish and continue, the status that existed 


182 A LATE HARVEST 


at the time the dispute arose.” The public may there- 
fore expect some advantage from the delay necessarily 
involved in the proceedings before first the regional 
boards and then the national tribunal. This result would 
be in accordance with the modest hope expressed by the 
conference in the introduction: that it may suggest 
measures “‘which will serve to avert or postpone 
industrial conflicts.” 

Many persons who have come to believe that the 
present industrial strife is detrimental to the great 
majority of the American public, and ought to be studied 
and treated in that interest only, were hoping that the 
second industrial conference would accept a larger func- 
tion than this delaying of industrial conflicts. They have 
been hoping that the conference would recommend that 
all industrial tribunals should invariably represent the 
public only, that the disputants may each employ its 
own counsel to present its case, and that the actual dis- 
putants, the employers on one side and the employees on 
the other, should appear only as witnesses. To disin- 
terested observers of the industrial strife as conducted 
during the last twenty years this seems far the best way 
to diminish the number of industrial disputes, to settle 
them justly, and to protect the mass of the people from 
the losses and sufferings which the crude and outgrown 
methods of conducting industrial conflicts now inflict 
upon them. 

It is probable that a strong majority of the American 
people are already prepared to advocate and support 
tribunals of that character. 

Section 4 of the statement issued by the second indus- 


PUBLIC OPINION ABOUT STRIKES 183 


trial conference inspires the hope that the conference 
will ultimately recommend sound legislative measures 
to secure the continuous operation of all public utilities. 
This section points out that the continuous operation of 
public utilities is vital to public welfare, and that the 
suspension of any of them produces “practically social 
and economic anarchy.” The following statement is 
especially encouraging, that the present treatment of 
public utilities, such as railways of all sorts, and gas, 
light, and power companies, by both legislatures and 
executives works serious harm to the general public: — 
‘The interruption in such essential public utilities is 
intolerable.” 

In Section 5, which relates to government employees, 
there is another hopeful statement to the effect that no 
government employees who are concerned with the ad- 
ministration of justice or the maintenance of public 
safety or public water-supplies should be permitted to 
join or retain membership in any organization which 
orders or authorizes strikes, or which is affiliated with 
any organization which uses the strike. Another impor- 
tant sentence is to the effect that no interference with 
the continuous operation of government functions 
through concerted cessation of work or threats thereof 
can be permitted. These statements will doubtless be 
acceptable to a very great majority of the American 
people, including the greater part of the working class 
commonly spoken of as labor, organized or unorganized. 
Indeed, the people are longing for exemption from 
strikes on foods, fuels, and the necessary means of 
communication, including all public utilities. 


184 A LATE HARVEST 


Some observers think that the application of the term 
“public utilities” might be extended advantageously 
as, for instance, to the commercial marine and to those 
parts of the printing-trade which are concerned with 
printing the daily newspapers. To many an American 
clerk, mechanic, or operative, his morning or eve- 
ning paper seems as much a necessity as his trolley 
car or the telephone booth. 

In the final section of its statement the conference 
expresses the hope that it may be able to contribute 
something more toward the reform which the President 
of the United States had in mind when he appointed the 
second conference. He hoped, among other things, that 
“the workman will feel himself induced to put forth 
his best efforts.” That is the gist of the whole matter. 
Under the factory system, in which the division of labor 
is extreme and each workman’s daily work is apt to be 
uninteresting or monotonous, how is the workman “to 
feel himself induced to put forth his best efforts”? It is 
obvious that the labor-union policies tend to dull the 
workman’s ambition and his satisfaction in his work. 
The uniform wage, the limited output, and the recom- 
mendation of moderate or measured effort while at work 
all tend in the direction of no satisfaction or joy in work 
and, therefore, toward no good work. What the labor 
leaders promise to their followers is higher pay and less 
work, and, to a large extent, they have been successful 
in fulfilling this promise. Unorganized labor has availed 
itself of the higher wages secured through the efforts of 
the labor unions, to the cost of which they make no con- 


PUBLIC OPINION ABOUT STRIKES 185 


tribution, and has been infected in many trades with the 
labor-union doctrine of “‘Go slow.” During the war the 
labor-union leaders succeeded in forcing wages to an un- 
precedented height in all industries connected with the 
supply of war materials and with the means of trans- 
portation by land or water; but did not attempt to 
stimulate to zealous work the men and women who 
received these high wages. 

Since peace came, the labor leaders manifest no dis- 
position either to disuse strikes or to encourage faithful 
work. On the other hand, employers have undergone in 
many parts of the country, and in many industries, a 
considerable change of mind concerning the right rela- 
tions between capital and labor, and are prepared to 
study, and to adopt after study, methods of manage- 
ment and regulation which, if well carried out, ought to 
revive in the working class as a whole the spirit of am- 
bition, codperation, and efficiency. The first of these 
methods is codperative management, the best effect of 
which is to give the intelligent workman, who takes part 
in the management, the sense that the works in which 
he is employed are his works, because he is in part 
responsible for their successful management, and is to 
share in the profits which better management will pro- 
duce. This sense of responsibility imparts a new interest 
to his working life. He wants to contribute to the stop- 
ping of waste and to the making of improvements, and 
particularly to the better direction or conduct of each 
man’s or woman’s work, so that it shall possess greater 
variety and some element of progress as years go on. In 


186 A LATE HARVEST 


short, it enables him, as President Wilson said, “to feel 
himself induced to put forth his best efforts.”” It makes 
it possible for him to have some joy in work. It gives 
him a chance to work in a factory with something of the 
content that the skillful handworker feels,and has always 
felt, in the process and product of his work. 

Intelligent employers are also taking new interest in 
presenting to the minds of their employees a good chance 
for a better reward of their labors year by year, not 
regularly or monotonously, but in the long run or on the 
average. This is the object of profit-sharing in all in- 
dustries which are conducted for a profit. It is, of course, 
necessary to any good effect of a profit-sharing scheme 
that it shall always be a hope or a confident expectation 
of an additional profit in the year current, or the six 
months to come, rather than a dividend declared on the 
proceedings of six months past. This, again, is in the 
direction of President Wilson’s hope that the workman 
will “feel himself induced to put forth his best efforts.” 

Employers in considerable number have made within 
recent years the discovery that the best thing they can 
do to assure the steady success of the businesses 1n which 
they are engaged is to promote the health, comfort, and 
contentment of their employees by providing for them 
and their families medical service, good housing, good 
schools, wholesome recreations, and a sound community 
spirit, localized and yet with a broad outlook. The sta- 
bility of any working corps will be greatly promoted by 
close attention to the health and welfare methods just 
mentioned; and this stability is in the highest degree 


PUBLIC OPINION ABOUT STRIKES 187 


desirable in the operation of any factory, mine, or works, 
but also in the building of character in the human beings 
who provide whatever muscular and will force is indis- 
pensable to the operation of the machinery which turns 
out the product of the establishment. Whenever the 
working force in a factory becomes inconstant or nomad, 
the cost of production is sensibly increased, and unfor- 
tunately the morale of the working force is apt to be 
impaired. Therefore the stability of the working forces 
is a great object in any manufacturing community. To 
that stability codperative management, profit-sharing, 
medical and nursing care, and well-managed schools 
powerfully contribute. 

It is one of the most objectionable of labor-union de- 
mands on well-meaning employers that they shall dis- 
continue their rather recent practice of requiring a phys- 
ical examination of all applicants for employment. That 
examination, in prospect, sets a standard of physical and 
moral health which is a strong inducement to right living 
among multitudes of boys and girls, and also tends to 
protect the working force of any establishment which 
prescribes it from the contagious diseases of vice. That 
organized labor objects to it is another piece of evidence 
that labor leaders are less concerned about the efficiency 
of any body of workmen than they are about raising 
wages and shortening hours. The abolition of physical 
examination of applicants for employment being now 
publicly announced as a union policy, the American 
public can draw a safe inference as to which policy will 
best serve the national interests: that of well-meaning 


188 A LATE HARVEST 


employers or that of the labor unions. The public 
can be counted on to make the right decision. 

The nation-wide strike on necessaries of life, including 
all sorts of transportation and communication, has gone 
far to convince the American people that they do not 
care to become subject to organized labor, and to make 
them see that the best hopes for industrial peace and 
prosperity lie in placing manufacturing plants (of mod- 
erate size) in villages or small towns; in managers who 
live with the working force ; in intimacy and codperation 
between managers and labor in all its subdivisions and 
ranks; and in attention to the individual and to small 
groups of superior individuals, just as in education, 
rather than to large blocks or groups of human beings 
erroneously supposed to have a uniform or average 
quality. In the industries of the future, uniformity as 
respects discipline, tasks, promotions, and rewards is 
going to be just as harmful as it has always been in 
schools, colleges, and universities. 

Public opinion is now tending strongly toward the 
acceptance of a few general principles as to the future 
conduct of the manufacturing industries on which civi- 
lization has come to depend; and it is a curious outcome 
of the World War that effective proofs of these prin- 
ciples have come out of that terrific catastrophe. The 
first principle is that capital and labor must codperate 
fairly, instead of distrusting and opposing each other. 
To bring about this codperation both capital and labor 
must come to a new frame of mind. Owners and man- 
agers must earnestly desire to improve the men and 


PUBLIC OPINION ABOUT STRIKES — 189 


women they employ in respect to intelligence, knowl- 
edge of the business in which they are engaged, health, 
comfort, stability, and zeal in work; and labor must at- 
tain for visible reasons to a better state of mind about 
their liberty, their influence or control over their own 
personal and family lives, their responsibility for the 
success of the business that employs them, and their 
ardor and energy while at work. 

Secondly, everybody realizes the necessity of new 
studies of the principal industries by the best experts 
obtainable, out of which may grow practical measures 
of reform. Many official and unofficial inquiries have 
been made into the real conditions of the principal in- 
dustries during the past ten years, and still nobody can 
answer such questions as the following: Can the funda- 
mental trades, like the carpenter’s, mason’s, plumber’s, 
or tailor’s, meet the needs of the American nation by 
working only eight hours a day, or can coal enough be 
mined for the households and industries of the whole 
people if the miners work well six or seven hours a day, 
three hundred and five days in the year? Such ignorance 
seems at first extraordinary, but less so when one reflects 
that the needs or demands of the people have been rising 
rapidly of late years, and that all the processes in many 
industries have been revolutionized during the same 
period. Under such changing circumstances there is the 
utmost need of cautious experimentation on wages, 
hours, and workmen’s habits, and all such experimen- 
tation should have the impartial, well-studied quality 
called scientific. Nothing but actual trial of promising 


190 A LATE HARVEST 


experiments can dispel the prevailing ignorance. Mani- 
festly, this is no field for ill-considered or violent 
experiments. 

Thirdly, it is now universally recognized that no- 
body — government, corporation, or private person — 
can afford to pay even moderate wages for little work or 
bad work. Whoever perseveres in that course will sooner 
or later become bankrupt — the private managers first, 
and then the governments. Here comes in President 
Wilson’s hope that ‘“‘the workman will feel himself in- 
duced to put forth his best efforts.” This is a moral or 
spiritual problem for the workers themselves to solve, 
with all possible aid from the rest of the people. 

If strikes should be abandoned by labor with all the 
accompanying apparatus of violence, would that mean 
that labor unions would cease to exist? By no means. 
The unions would retain many functions through which 
they have made themselves useful for many years. They 
would continue to advocate government regulation of 
child labor and women’s labor, the Old Testament law, 
“six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work,” and 
equitable provisions against sickness, accident, and pre- 
mature disability. Labor unions would perform all the 
functions which professional societies perform so well for 
the benefit of their members and the community, the 
functions of the bar associations, the medical societies, 
and the teachers’ associations in large variety. They 
would continue to appeal to the public on all questions 
of general interest which arise between employers and 
employed, and would be able to increase greatly their 


PUBLIC OPINION ABOUT STRIKES | ig1 


means of publicity if they saved their expenditures on 
strikes. If they had given up action that rests on vio- 
lence and the infliction of widespread suffering, they 
would make a much stronger appeal to the general good- 
will. Of course they would need a new kind of leader- 
ship; for their present leaders have grown up with the 
combat methods, and would doubtless find themselves 
wholly at a loss under the new policy of codperation and 
good will. 

Finally, it is not enough that every career should be 
open to talent, as Napoleon said. Every effort should 
also be made by parents, schools, foremen, inspectors, 
and managers to discover and help forward the talent. 
This policy is of the essence of democracy ; the practice 
of it is one of the prime conditions of increasing benefi- 
cenceallthroughdemocracy’sfuturecareer. Democratic 
society must impart to the common people not only 
more freedom and better training than any other polit- 
ical and social organization has provided, but also more 
knowledge and skill in the manual crafts as well as in the 
liberal arts. 


at, 
EN 


NA 





MEDICINE AND PUBLIC HEALTH 





THE FUTURE OF MEDICINE} 


Asout prophecy, I am very much of the mind of James 
Russell Lowell, “Don’t never prophesy onless ye 
know.” We can, however, draw some safe inferences 
with regard to the future from what we have seen in 
the past; and a keen observer can often see a few signs 
of what is coming, because future events, if not too 
remote, do give signs of their coming. 

I have had the privilege of knowing a good deal about 
the past sixty years of the medical profession. I appreci- 
ate fully the excellent picture which Dr. Thayer has 
just put before you of the medical education and the 
practice of medicine twenty to twenty-five years ago; 
and I have clearly in mind many earlier pictures of 
sixty, fifty, forty, and thirty years ago. I have person- 
ally witnessed large progress in the Medical School of 
Harvard University, in which two generations of teach- 
ers have taken part. At another medical meeting not 
long ago I told of some of the things I saw in the Medi- 
cal School of 1869; and I noticed that the picture then 
painted caused some amusement among my medical 
audience. Indeed, some expressions of incredulity were 
visible — particularly in regard to the students’ attend- 
ing six hours of didactic lectures on end five days in the 


1 A Speech at the Harvard Medical Alumni dinner, May 12, 1917, 
revised from an incomplete stenographic report and reprinted in the 
Harvard Alumni Bulletin, October 25, 1917. 


196 A LATE HARVEST 


week, and in regard to the extreme shortness of the 
required medical term, which then did not exceed four 
months out of the year. I noticed expressions of in- 
credulity and amusement when I said that each candi- 
date for graduation took nine oral examinations of five 
minutes each, and won his degree if he passed in five 
subjects out of the nine. 

If I reflect on the great progress in medical education 
and the extensive changes in the medical profession 
itself since I first began to take notice of these matters, 
I can look forward with confidence to great progress in 
the future. I cannot find words to express the confi- 
dence I feel in the future progress of medicine as a 
science, as an art, and as the controller of many of 
the worst evils that afflict human society. The prog- 
ress of the last sixty years, and our clear vision of 
the conquests still to be made should assure us all of 
the magnificent future of medicine. 

I noticed, when Dr. Arnold was speaking, that he 
spoke of the Graduate School of Medicine as thus far 
largely a school for practitioners who come to it to re- 
fresh or extend their knowledge, and that he was not 
entirely content with that condition of the Graduate 
School. And, indeed, that new department of the 
Medical School should also train in higher studies an 
increasing number of men who have just received the 
degree of Doctor of Medicine; but that service to 
practitioners which the Graduate School is already 
rendering points to one of the great changes in the med- 
ical profession and to one of its best hopes. Every 


THE FUTURE OF MEDICINE 197 


ambitious and competent physician or surgeon now 
feels that he is going to continue the process of learning 
all his life, and he is going to do this with diligence and 
gladness. The rising schools for practitioners and the 
various clinics open to practitioners are going to have 
broad and deep effects on the practice of both medicine 
and surgery. Five years ago, I came to know well in 
China a United States Army surgeon who told me that 
he could not satisfy himself in the exercise of his function 
without going back to the clinic of the Mayo brothers 
at least once in three years. 

One of the previous speakers alluded to my interest 
in preventive medicine. I have taken a strong interest 
in that branch of medicine; because that phrase covers 
an immense new service of the medical profession to the 
community, and much future happiness for the pro- 
fession itself. To prevent evils and wrongs on a large 
scale by one’s own personal wisdom and diligence gives 
even greater satisfaction than to cure individual cases 
of suffering from evils or wrongs, and the good done to 
the community by prevention is broader and ampler 
than the good done by curing. Within the last twenty 
years many new employments and serviceable posi- 
tions have been opened to graduates in medicine who 
have made special studies in preventive medicine. Such 
are the chief positions in the Medical Corps of the Army 
and Navy, in and under Boards of Health, and in the 
sanitary service of cities, towns, and schools. The move- 
ment tends to the acceptance by medical men of sala- 
ries from public and semipublic boards, and from 


198 A LATE HARVEST 


corporations in great number, salaries which yield a suf- 
ficient though modest support for a family, and permit 
the recipients to devote themselves without interrup- 
tion or distraction to professional work largely of a pre- 
ventive character. The profession has long been famil- 
lar with service to insurance companies. It is going to 
become familiar with service to government — national, 
state, and municipal — and tocorporations, educational, 
charitable, and commercial. I lately visited two large 
manufacturing corporations that were paying good 
salaries to medical men and nurses who devote their 
whole time to the corporations’ workmen and their 
families, their services being both preventive and cura- 
tive, but chiefly preventive. The indications are that 
in the future a larger and larger proportion of men well 
educated in medicine will devote themselves chiefly 
to preventive medicine. This change is by no means 
to be regretted. On the contrary, the profession and 
the community are to be heartily congratulated on it. 

Important changes have already taken place in the 
private practice of both physicians and surgeons. The 
automobile and the telephone have enlarged the terri- 
tory over which:a skillful man of good quality can 
comfortably practise; and these new facilities promote 
the most cheerful, discerning, and skillful men at the 
expense of the less cheerful, discerning, and skillful. 
This change, of course, supports sound and well-directed 
medical education. 

The private practitioner, whether physician or 
surgeon, is getting more and more dependent upon 


THE FUTURE OF MEDICINE 199 


laboratories, and on experts in the use of complex appa- 
ratus and in the making of complicated tests or explora- 
tions for diagnostic purposes. The family physician 
must employ in difficult cases experts in chemical and 
bacteriological examinations, and in the use of the X-ray 
or of the Wassermann test. For similar reasons the 
surgeon must employ an expert to administer anesthet- 
ics, and to select the anesthetic best fitted for the case 
in hand. When the Massachusetts General Hospital 
offered to any reputable physician the use of all the 
new and costly methods of diagnosis on his own patient 
at prices possible for people of moderate means, it set 
on foot a method of action which is going to have strong 
effect first, on medical practice in the country, and 
secondly, on the philanthropic relations of the profes- 
sion to the community. We have been long familiar 
with the philanthropic work of the profession towards 
the poorest classes. We are now going to see the highest 
technical skill of the medical and surgical profession 
put at the service of the people of moderate income 
through their family physician, such service as only 
rich people have heretofore been able to pay for without 
serious embarrassment. 

The habit of practising specialties in medicine has 
grown up quite within my memory, and has wrought 
great changes in the practice of both medicine and 
surgery. I recall the time when the most skillful sur- 
geons in Boston did not venture to give up general 
medical practice and rely solely on their surgery, 
and when specialties in surgery were unknown. The 


200 A LATE HARVEST 


increase in the number of these, and indeed in the pub- 
lic appreciation of specialists, gradually led to a new 
method of determining fees in a part of the medical 
profession. Fees increased very much, not only for 
surgical specialists but for the obstetrician as well. 
Then the method of charging “what the traffic will 
bear” came into use. We all know that there are now 
some large medical establishments which proceed on 
that rule, taking much pains to determine what the 
probable or ascertainable income of the patient is. It 
is not clear to the learned and scientific professions at 
large that the honor and dignity of the medical pro- 
fession have been advanced by the use of this method. 
More and more it 1s looked upon as a commercial rather 
than a professional method. Even in commerce or 
business that maxim is not in good odor. I look forward 
to the abandonment of that method of charging for 
medical and surgical services. Like all other profes- 
sions, the medical profession should be well reimbursed 
for the long training it requires and for the slow develop- 
ment of a good practice; but it should always be a 
calling which is not pursued for the money end; and it 
should cultivate and live by the noble, scientific idea 
of giving away all knowledge the individual practitioner 
requires. The medical and surgical societies where 
medical men meet and discuss their experiences main- 
tain the standard of the profession in this respect. The 
knowledge there given away becomes broadly useful. 
It is one of the great privileges of professional men 
in general that they do not have to make the money 


= 


THE FUTURE OF MEDICINE 201 


question a primary consideration in their careers. The 
making of money 1s not their prime object, and is not 
the test of their success. As I look back on my own pro- 
fessional career, I see clearly that one of its greatest 
privileges has been my comparative exemption from 
thought of making or multiplying money; and I can 
testify now after eight years of experience that to live 
on a pension, which is of the nature of postponed pay- 
ments for services, is a very comfortable and desirable 
mode of life — chiefly for the reason that under such 
conditions one can dismiss all thought about money 
except the prevention of waste. 

In the present crisis in the life of the American people 
the medical profession cannot but rejoice that it was 
better prepared for war service than any other pro- 
fession in the country, including the military and naval 
profession. It was prepared to apply every medical and 
surgical invention of the last fifty years at once for the 
benefit of the army and navy. It did apply inoculation 
for typhoid, and conducted a successful resistance to 
typhus. It was already preventing yellow fever, and 
curing and preventing hookworm disease and malaria. 
It promptly demonstrated that surgery was something 
more than cutting off and cutting out — it could rectify 
and repair. It could make immediate application in 
war of the recently discovered improvements in ortho- 
peedic and dental surgery. The first aid which America 
was able to give to the European combatants was 
medical aid. This country is not ready yet to give 
effective military or naval aid; but we were ready to 


202 A LATE HARVEST 


send in the first year of the war doctors, surgeons, 
nurses, and orderlies by the thousand, thoroughly pre- 
pared to render efficient service at the great hospi-- 
tals at the front or in the rear. In war as in peace, the 
medical profession has shown itself to be thoroughly 
altruistic, beneficent, and self-sacrificing. 

The medical profession in America justly claims to 
have developed and greatly improved the vocation of 
nursing, and to have invented and established the dis- 
trict nurse, and the social worker in connection with 
hospitals and dispensaries. The district nurses and the 
social workers going out from hospitals form a new 
class of teachers whose contribution to the welfare of 
the community grows more and more important. The 
family physician also is becoming more and more a 
teacher of hygiene, a preserver of health, and an adviser 
in family anxieties and distresses. 

The future of medicine is bright beyond compare. It 
is in full harmony with the democratic spirit which is 
pervading the world, with the new sense of human 
brotherhood, and with the new conviction that religion 
is not forms and ceremonies, or rites and dogmas, but 
a tolerant, friendly, and cooperative spirit, which 
prompts to common good works. 


PRESENT AND FUTURE SOCIAL 
HYGIENE IN AMERICA! 


THE term Social Hygiene came into use in America 
through the titles of certain incorporated private socie- 
ties, one national and a few chartered by States. The 
term got associated in the public mind chiefly with two 
subjects, namely, prostitution or commercialized vice, 
and the treatment and prevention of venereal diseases. 
The establishment of these societies and the organizing 
of their work was due mainly to the conscientious and 
public-spirited labors of a few physicians whose practice 
had made them familiar with the horrible effects of the 
venereal diseases on ignorant and irresponsible young 
men and on innocent women who were infected by their 
husbands. But the private societies soon took on pre- 
ventive work in which social workers and benevolent 
men and women interested in the promotion of the 
public health took an active part. 

When the United States went to war with Germany 
in April 1917, both the Army and the Navy promptly 
discovered that to keep the American soldier and sailor 
fit for fighting they must take active measures for treat- 
ing and preventing venereal diseases among the men 
at the front and the men preparing for service in camps 
or barracks in this country. Hence came energetic 


1 From the International Fournal of Public Health, Geneva, Switzer- 
land, January-February, 1921. 


204 A LATE HARVEST 


action in both the Army and the Navy, which wrought 
sudden and great improvement in the condition of 
millions of enlisted men and in the civil communities, 
both urban and rural, with which the men were in 
contact. The National and State Health Services 
received large appropriations from Congress and several 
State Legislatures, and learned to codperate for the 
prevention of venereal and other diseases and in general 
for the promotion of the public health. Congress also 
enacted a war prohibition-measure which turned out 
to be very serviceable in promoting the efficiency and 
health of both the Army and the Navy, and taught a 
striking lesson concerning the good effects of prohibition 
on the productiveness and health of the nation. 

When the Armistice of November 11, 1918, put a stop 
to the actual fighting, it did not arrest the activities 
of the National and State organizations on behalf of 
public health, which the necessities of war had induced. 
Since that date Congress has maintained and even 
strengthened the public-health services of the nation, 
and some of the State Legislatures have followed its 
example. Since the Armistice admirable plans for the 
maintenance of clinics for the diagnosis and treatment 
of venereal diseases and their consequences have been 
devised and put into execution in both town and 
country by cordial codperation between Federal and 
State health authorities, and already have given proof 
of great serviceableness. The American Social Hygiene 
Association, whose headquarters are in New York City, 
has also increased its activities, and 1s receiving a better 
pecuniary support than it has ever had before. 


SOCIAL HYGIENE IN AMERICA 205 


The objects which these various agencies pursue are 
no longer limited to resistance to prostitution and the 
venereal diseases; and their work, which at first had 
to be carried on with the utmost reserve and even pri- 
vacy, has now become open and public, particularly in 
its educational features. It already includes support of 
all measures to deliver the American people from the 
evil effects of alcoholic drinks, including nation-wide 
prohibition thoroughly taught and effectively enforced. 
It is reaching out to the great subject of industrial 
medicine, which has been hopefully developed by a few 
progressive physicians in codperation with some large 
manufacturing corporations, but has so vast a compass 
that only National and State authorities can promptly 
secure the great gains it promises for the industrial 
population. 

There is still urgent need of steady advocacy of 
the single standard of chastity for men and women, 
and of like treatment by police authorities of the 
men and women arrested together in the resorts of 
sexual vice. 

Still another subject concerning public health should 
be promptly brought within the scope of the new 
National and State health authorities— the great 
subject of wholesome housing. Again private effort and 
the money of public-spirited and benevolent citizens 
have been doing the necessary pioneering work, and 
some private corporations are making important experi- 
ments on the subject; but it is not probable that private 
citizens and corporations can accomplish promptly the 
enormous work which is urgently needed in the interest 


OO6 A LATE HARVEST 


of the public health and happiness. The problem con- 
cerns many millions of the American people, whose 
housing under the factory system has become very 
bad in respect to lack of light and air, crowding, and 
deprivation of land for each family to cultivate. The 
tall urban tenement house, where ground 1s dear, cannot 
be made a proper habitation for human beings and 
especially for children, unless placed on wide streets 
and near public gardens or parks. 

It is indispensable to the health and vigor of the 
industrial population that factories should be hereafter 
built in suburbs or the country, and that those who 
work in them should be provided with wholesome, 
convenient, and enjoyable houses, with a garden plot 
for every family. 

Pioneering researches made by physicians who habit- 
ually give their attention to mental diseases and by 
heads of hospitals for the insane and of schools for the 
feeble-minded have demonstrated beyond a doubt that 
in the interest of the community much more public 
expenditure should be made on the detection, selection, 
and segregation of feeble-minded, defective, and crimi- 
nally-minded children and adults than has heretofore 
been practised in the United States or in any other 
nation. This diagnosis and the consequent segregation 
are needed in all schools, prisons, relief and rescue 
societies, public dispensaries, and hospital out-patient 
departments, and in all courts which deal with errant 
children, habitual drunkards, and insane persons, either 
harmless or dangerous. The segregation of such 
diseased or defective persons should be so complete 


SOCIAL HYGIENE IN AMERICA 207 


that breeding by them would be prevented. At the 
same time the persons so segregated should be provided 
with the means of doing whatever productive labor 
they are capable of, since manual labor is generally 
agreeable and beneficial to such unfortunates. Some 
new legislation will be needed in the United States 
before this urgent reform can be effected ; and therefore 
the ordinary voters and their representatives in legis- 
latures must be convinced by all kinds of public 
instruction and discussion that this direction of public 
expenditure is economical as well as merciful, and will 
contribute greatly to the improvement of public mor- 
als and public health. This need of new legislation is 
by no means confined to the United States of America. 
Fortunately all political parties, large or small, con- 
servative or progressive, are likely to favor these new 
expenditures on behalf of human conservation and of 
the health and happiness of the whole people. It may 
now fairly be expected that legislatures will respond to 
well-argued appeals for new public expenditures in 
these directions. 

In the general field of public hygiene there is another 
object of public expenditure in a democracy which 
offers an attractive prospect of service, namely, the 
study of healthy conditions of employment in the 
modern industries. It is not an exaggeration to say that 
little is known about the expedient number of hours for 
a man or woman to work per day or per week in the 
mining and manufacturing industries, or even in agri- 
cultural employments, if due regard is to be paid 
to current health and enduring capacity for labor. 


208 A LATE HARVEST 


For a hundred years past there has been a tendency 
to diminution in the number of hours spent per day in 
fatiguing employments, but this reduction has been 
brought about in the crudest possible manner without 
any accurate knowledge, much less demonstration, of 
the wholesome number of working hours per day in the 
great variety of different trades or occupations which 
modern industry offers. It would seem as if the number 
of hours of work per day or per week should vary, for 
example, at the different seasons of the year in seasonal 
trades; that they should be fewer in indoor work than 
in outdoor, fewer underground than aboveground, and 
many fewer in occupations in which the work has no 
possible interest and quickly becomes automatic routine 
for the operative, than in occupations which involve 
only free handwork which may change from hour to 
hour or from day to day. Nobody knows whether the 
work of the world can be carried on successfully, that 
is, with the best results for human comfort and enjoy- 
ment, on a universal six-hour day or an eight, or any 
other fixed and uniform number of hours. Nobody 
knows what the best way is of giving every workman 
one day’s rest in seven, in the industries which must be 
continuously operated, like a blast furnace, or a railway, 
although almost everybody believes that there should 
be one day’s rest in seven. Nobody knows that in the 
best bodily and mental interest of workmen and their 
families daily or weekly wages should be identical in any 
given trade all over one national domain, in spite of the 
fact that the trade is carried on in many widely sepa- 


SOCIAL HYGIENE IN AMERICA 209 


rated places, under different climatic conditions, and 
with dissimilar surroundings as regards educational 
facilities, natural beauty, and home attachments. Yet 
trades-unions generally advocate uniform wages per 
nation and per trade or the subdivisions thereof. 

There is therefore need of numerous careful researches, 
to be made, of course, by impartial experts under 
competent direction, as to the wholesome number of 
working hours per day or per week in a great variety of 
dissimilar occupations. These researches cannot well be 
performed by private individuals; because the mere 
collection of the needed material would require public 
authority, and also because the general acceptance of 
the results of the researches would depend on public 
belief in the wise selection of the men who made them. 
These men would have to be selected for proved capac- 
ity and character by public authorities who were be- 
lieved to be impartial, disinterested, socially minded, 
and judicious. There is no juster or more promising 
field for the expenditure of public money than this field 
of industrial research ; and it is essentially a field belong- 
ing to social hygiene, or in other words, to public health 
and human conservation. 








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THE CRYING NEED OF A RENEWED 
CHRISTIANITY! 


Tuis meeting is held under the auspices of three Chris- 
tian churches of a peculiar sort, belonging to a small 
denomination called Unitarian — peculiar in that they 
have no ecclesiastical organization in the ordinary 
sense, and also no creed or body of dogmas which mem- 
bers of such churches must accept, or are supposed to 
accept. Every church in this peculiar body is independ- 
ent, and, like the church of the Plymouth Pilgrims, 
chooses its own minister, enters, if possible, into such 
fellowship as it pleases with other churches, and decides 
for itself upon the charitable, educational, and social 
work it proposes to carry on. The denomination stands 
for complete religious liberty, for a respectful attitude 
toward all sincere religious beliefs, — Christian or other, 
—and for judging every religion by the amount of 
genuine twentieth-century ethics which finds place in 
it. This peculiar church invites serious and candid 
people to unite, in the spirit of Jesus Christ, for the 
worship of God and the service of man, but leaves 
entirely to the individual the decision whether he shall 
join a church or not. No rite bars the way into this 
church, no baptism, confirmation, or examination, and 
no one enters it in hope of reward or out of fear of 
punishment. 


1An address delivered under the auspices of the Unitarian 
churches of Philadelphia, December 29, 1914. 


214 A LATE HARVEST 


The great churches of Christendom all possess power- 
ful ecclesiastical organizations, and bodies of doctrine 
which are supposed to contain already the whole of 
essential religious truth, and to be unchangeable from 
age to age, except as the ecclesiastical bodies which 
govern the respective churches choose to make addi- 
tions, or to issue new interpretations. All the great 
Christian churches have instituted rites, rituals, cere- 
monies, sacraments, and observances which they re- 
quire their members to accept, attend, or perform, 
particularly those relating to birth, marriage, and death, 
the great events in every human life. The creeds and 
dogmas of these churches contain many conceptions 
which are not arrived at or deduced by any reasoning 
process, but are mere products of the human imagina- 
tion which are accepted by a mysterious intuition or 
insight with which neither inductive nor deductive 
reasoning has anything to do. The Unitarian churches 
reject irrational piety, while maintaining to the full 
wonder, reverence, and awe. 


The period at which this meeting takes place, is, in 
many respects, the most awful and momentous in the 
history of the world. More than 300,000,000 of people 
are involved in the most cruel and savage war that has 
ever been waged — a war in which the recently won 
powers of man over Nature are all turned with an 
administrative efficiency greater than the world has 
ever before seen, to the most active and persistent 
destruction of life and property, of the capital laid up 


NEED OF RENEWED CHRISTIANITY 215 


by the industry and frugality of many previous genera- 
tions, and of the good will which had begun to develop 
between nation and nation. The war has demonstrated 
that, while mankind discovered and is using the mar- 
velous new powers of light, heat, and electricity for 
purposes of immense beneficence, governments called 
Christian are capable of using these same powers, 
acquired for beneficent ends, in a manner which spreads 
death, desolation, and sorrow among 300,000,000 of 
the human race, availing themselves for these horrible 
purposes of some of the finest moral qualities which 
inhere in the helpless multitudes. Moreover, during 
fifty years past, Christian nations in Europe have given 
their best efforts to devising and storing up the means 
of making war in the most destructive manner and on 
an unprecedented scale. The present holocaust has been 
planned deliberately with the utmost intelligence and 
foresight, and is being carried on with terrible efficiency 
by the nation which is chiefly responsible for it —a 
Christian nation, like all the other nations involved 
except Turkey and Japan. This is the immense moral 
catastrophe of these times. It has taken place in spite 
of much progress made within a hundred years past in 
many parts of the world in popular education, humane 
literature, and public liberty, and of a widespread, 
sympathetic desire on the part of the more fortunate 
men and women to serve and help the less fortunate. 
In nineteen hundred years the Christian institutions 
of religion—in other words, the highly organized 
churches of Christendom — have not only been unable 


216 A LATE HARVEST 


to accomplish anything effectual toward preventing 
the frequent occurrence of war, but have often incited 
to war each its own nation or its own race, and have 
made hotter the patriotic fires which blaze up in war- 
time. Every ruler concerned with the present war calls 
upon God to give victory to his arms; every one of them 
believes, as firmly as David or Joshua or Saladin did, 
that the Lord is on his side; and each people is putting 
up eager prayers to its national God which cannot be 
granted without denying the equally fervent prayers 
which go up from its adversaries, and is giving thanks 
for victories for its side which are cruel defeats for the 
other. Moreover, there come from the churches to-day 
no effective influences toward peace, but only delusive 
consolations and vague wishes and petitions, the grant- 
ing of which by the God to whom they are addressed 
would only perpetuate the present horrible state of 
Europe. Who could imagine that the chief teachings of 
the founder of the religion which these nations and 
churches profess were — Love God and thy neighbor, 
and treat all men as brothers? Clearly, neither nations 
nor churches have ever been truly Christian. 


It is a fitting time, therefore, in which to seek the 
reasons for the inefficiency of the great Christian 
churches in promoting the moral and physical welfare 
of mankind on this earth, whatever they may claim to 
do in respect to human happiness in another. The first 
explanation is that institutional Christianity departed 
early from the teachings of the founder of the religion, 


NE ON RENEW Hh CHRISTIANITY: 217 


and copied in its structure the authoritative and hier- 
archical arrangements, and in its doctrine the material- 
ism, of the Roman world. There emerged from the early 
centuries after Christ two despotic Churches, each of 
which undertook to rule the minds and hearts of men, 
and did rule for many centuries the masses of the Euro- 
pean peoples. The Protestant Reformation made a 
serious breach in the Roman Church, and brought in 
some new liberty — civil as well as religious — but 
Protestantism remained a highly authoritative reli- 
gion ;for within well-organized Protestant denominations 
the authority of the inspired Bible replaced for the 
common people the authority of the Roman hierarchy, 
the authoritative interpretation of the Bible being sup- 
plied by small groups of men learned in the theology of 
the times. Not till the Pilgrims set up in Plymouth 
their free Church in their free State, did the Christian 
world contain a fairly successful example of instituted 
civil and religious liberty. The Pilgrim Church and 
State set up standards of which America, at least, has 
never lost sight; but within seventy-five years many of 
the Pilgrims’ liberties were lost or impaired; so that 
the compact signed in the cabin of the Mayflower, and 
John Robinson’s doctrine that more light and truth 
were still to break forth from God’s Word, became little 
more than a precious and fragrant memory. 

The first explanation, then, of the impotency of the 
Christian churches as regards the prevention of war is 
that they were all organized with too much authority 
and too little liberty in them. They never believed in 


218 A LATE HARVEST . 


God’s way of developing the best and most effective 
human character — the way of liberty to sin, in order 
to the development of self-control. The Christian as- 
cetics avoided fleshly temptation by mortifying the 
flesh: the monks and nuns fled from the world alto- 
gether. The first duties of the common people in re- 
ligion were obedience to the priest and the observance 
of the rites the priest prescribed. Men and women 
should be compelled to believe whatever the Church 
dictated, and should be held to the authorized beliefs 
and practices of the Church by custom, tradition, and 
hallowed associations. The churches have not relied on 
the essential dignity of human nature and the human 
love of freedom for the uplifting of the race, but, on the 
contrary, on man’s tendency to sin and his fear of the 
consequences, and on his too-frequent degradation in 
this world and his hope of salvation in another — a 
salvation obtainable only through the vicegerents of 
God on earth. Not believing in liberty, the churches 
have habitually supported autocratic government, and 
that climax of autocracy — military discipline for 
purposes of conquest. 

The second explanation of the impotency of the 
Christian churches to prevent war, or promote peace, 
is to be found in the unethical quality of some of the 
doctrines of the Christian churches, as crystallized in 
their dogmas and creeds. The official creeds of the 
great churches of Christianity, and many parts of the 
Scriptures, contain conceptions of God’s nature and of 
his action toward the human race which are intoler- 


NEED OF RENEWED CHRISTIANITY 219 


able to the ethical mind of the nineteenth and twentieth 
centuries. The creeds of the evangelical churches are, 
as a rule, built on the “‘fall of man”’ as described in the 
story of the Garden of Eden, the absolute correctness 
or trustworthiness of the story itself being assumed on 
the ground that its author was inspired by God Him- 
self. The conduct attributed to God in that story 
would be wholly unworthy of any man whose standards 
of conduct accorded with the average sentiments about 
right and wrong of civilized people to-day. God in that 
story is unjust, mean, and cruel; yet the story, taken as 
a narrative of facts, has been made the foundation of 
the official creeds of all the great Christian churches. 
Man fell from a superior state of innocency into a 
condition of sin and misery. Nevertheless, he peopled 
the earth with creatures like himself, degraded and 
wretched. But this result was unsatisfactory even to 
barbarous ages, when considered as the work of God, 
ani means of redemption and ultimate salvation had 
to be devised and formulated. Hence came the practice 
of propitiation or expiation by sacrifices — human 
sacrifices at first in Israel, but later burnt offerings of 
beasts and birds; and finally the Christian Church 
discovered in the Scriptures a vicarious atonement for 
the sins of the world by the Son of God, incarnated for 
a brief residence on this atom of an earth, in this insig- 
nificant solar system among the countless myriads of 
celestial bodies. The Lamb of God was sacrificed for 
the sins of the world; and so some small proportion of 
the human race was rescued from eternal torment, to 


220 A LATE HARVEST 


justify by their eternal happiness, so far as they might, 
the original creation of a feeble race tricked into sin. 
The creeds of the great churches differ as to the pro- 
portion of the race really rescued by the vicarious atone- 
ment through Jesus Christ ; but they all agree in making 
this vicarious atonement necessary to the salvation of 
any proportion of the human race. 

In these days, the whole conception of one being — 
human or divine — suffering, though innocent, for 
the sins of another, or of innumerable others, is revolt- 
ing to the universal sense of justice and fair dealing. 
No family, no school, and no court would venture to 
punish the innocent when the guilty were known, in 
order that the guilty might escape punishment. Any 
human father would be outraged by the suggestion that 
he had ever dealt, or could so deal with his children; 
and yet every member of the great Christian churches 
is supposed to believe that God deals in that way with 
the human race; and that the victim offered up for the 
redemption of a portion of the human race was, in a 
peculiar sense, the Son of God. How incredible it is, 
that the religious institutions and doctrines which 
resulted from the perversions of the real teachings of 
Jesus by the pagan world should have been so com- 
pletely and fundamentally inconsistent with the ethics 
of those teachings! 

Before the Christian churches can be expected to 
be efficient in the promotion of human welfare, and 
particularly in the bringing of peace on earth, they must 
purge themselves of such doctrines as these. It is not 


NEED OF RENEWED CHRISTIANITY 221 


enough to say in defense of the churches that many 
church members in good standing no longer believe 
these shocking doctrines; they should be eliminated 
from the published standards and confessions of the 
churches. 

The historical Christian churches were early made 
partners with empires, monarchies, and baronies in the 
control and oppression of the masses of mankind, and, 
the governments being maintained by force, the 
churches became, in general, supporters of the military 
régime. This was natural enough, because the God of 
the Christian churches, like Israel’s God, was commonly 
thought of as Lord of Hosts, God of Battles, Successful 
Invader, and Glorious Conqueror. These martial attri- 
butes of God were described with glowing fervor in the 
litanies, ascriptions, and thanksgivings of the churches. 
Joshua’s God was the most ruthless of destroyers. Not 
so destructive, however, as the German Emperor’s God 
to-day, because he evidently lacked the power to 
destroy everything that he wished to destroy: “And 
the Lord was with Judah; and he drave out the in- 
habitants of the mountain, but could not drive out 
the inhabitants of the valley, because they had 
chariots of iron.’” Some of the Canaanites successfully 
resisted the Lord of the Israelite hosts; but in these 
later days the Belgians could not successfully resist 
the Lord of the German hosts. This conception of 
God is hideous, cruel, and insane; and no Christian 
church which tolerates it can be efficient in the 
promotion of human welfare and happiness. 


222 A LATE HARVEST 


Not only is the God of the great Christian churches 
often a War God, but the Christian life itself is often 
represented in Christian hymn and preaching as a 
‘battle. The Christian fights against Satan and the 
powers of evil — he goes forth to war against the evils 
and wrongs of his day: ““The Son of God goes forth to 
war, a kingly crown to gain’? — meanest of motives. 
The saint wears armor, the armor of the medieval 
battlefield, and the archangels and the knights set upon 
the dragons and fiends and slay them with swords. A 
large part of the imagery of Christian literature 1s drawn 
from the work of soldiers and armies. “Onward Chris- 
tian soldiers, marching as to war,” is to-day one of the 
favorite hymns of the Protestant churches. In the 
annual procession of the Corpus Christi in Vienna, three 
bodies take common part, each with great magnificence 
— the Court, the Army, and the Church. This is the 
habitual association which has gradually undermined 
the capacity of the Church to advance in modern 
Europe the cause of justice, mercy, and liberty, and 
hence of peace and good will. 

The Christian nations have, however, attained since 
the Middle Ages toa civilization which seems to modern 
men in Christian lands higher than that of the non- 
Christian nations, except in the prevalence of inter- 
national war and fighting in general. For at least six 
hundred years the Christian nations have fought oftener 
and harder than the so-called heathen. Within the past 
two centuries all the great wars have been fought on 
Christian soil by Christian soldiers. This recognized 


NEED OF RENEWED CHRISTIANITY 293 


superiority in general civilization, however, is not chiefly 
due to the churches, but to other influences. The chief 
beneficial result of the Crusades was a remarkable 
development of Mediterranean commerce between the 
East and the West. The period which we call the 
Renaissance was the period of a remarkable revival of 
classical learning, and particularly of the Greek litera- 
ture. The discovery of America brought about an 
immense increase of commercial adventure and of Occi- 
dental wealth; while the religious enthusiasm which 
accompanied the discovery was the source of hideous 
cruelties and barbarities. The Reformation was not a 
normal product of the Roman Church but a rebellion 
and schism within that Church, one consequence of 
which was an increase of civil and religious liberty in 
Europe. In the eighteenth century began the great 
series of scientific discoveries due to the adoption and 
successful use of the inductive philosophy and method; 
and for the last one hundred and fifty years it has been 
natural and physical science which has been the main 
contributor to the increasing material welfare of man- 
kind. Science has won its way in spite of the opposition 
of the principal Christian churches; and that opposition 
did not cease until within the memory of men now liv- 
ing; indeed, it still breaks out from time to time. And 
now, within the last five months, the worst war of all 
recorded time — worst because of its wide extent, the 
fury with which it is prosecuted, and the destructive 
power of its new implements — brings unheard-of 
misery upon the human race; the Christian churches 


224 A LATE HARVEST 


are helpless to prevent it, or even to mitigate its 
horrors. The effective organizations for such pitifully 
small relief as can be given are for the most part not 
religious but secular. The care of the wounded falls on 
men and women trained in natural and physical science, 
and possessing manual skill and the spirit of service. 
The effective works of mercy are performed, not chiefly 
by representatives of the churches or by religious parti- 
sans and zealots, but by men and women who under- 
stand how to get food to the starving, to bring first aid 
to the wounded and carry them quickly to hospitals, 
to prevent fevers and infections, to purify water sup- 
plies, and to treat lockjaw, gangrene, and frostbite. 
The effective advocates of peace and good will among 
men in this horrible convulsion, produced by a nation 
which believes in discipline, ruthless force, and the 
domination of the strong over the weak, are not the 
priests and ministers of traditional Christianity, or 
the performers of rites and ceremonies, but the teach- 
ers of public liberty as the indispensable source of the 
highest efficiency in individual or nation, and of public 
justice and righteousness developed under free govern- 
mental institutions which train men to self-control in 
freedom under law. 

The great European war is fundamentally a conflict 
between freedom and democracy on the one side, and 
the rule of hereditary monarchs and a military class on 
the other, that rule being maintained by appeals to love 
of country and national pride, and enforced by a stern 
discipline which leaves nothing of liberty to the indi- 


NEED OF RENEWED CHRISTIANITY 225 


vidual. In this strife the Christian Church as a whole is 
divided, each national church supporting its own na- 
tion; and by inheritance and tradition each national 
church supports the war-making power, no matter how 
cruel, deceitful, and faithless that power may prove to 
be. In short, the established and conventional churches 
manifest little power to promote either love to God or 
love to the neighbor. 

Is this ineffective condition the final issue of the 
teachings of Jesus Christ, or is it only the result of the 
structure of the institutions and the quality of the 
doctrines in which those teachings have been embodied 
and set forth? To this question a great many men in all 
the nations of Europe and America reply that such a 
discussion has no interest for them: that they have not 
only rejected the traditional dogmas of established 
Christianity, but that they have no interest in discuss- 
ing them; that the vital movements of the human 
spirit have taken more promising directions; and that 
they are concerned not with the Christian churches, but 
with the new powers which make for liberty, enlighten- 
ment, and progress. Multitudes of these men say that 
they are ready for any sort of social service; and at this 
moment multitudes of them in France and England are 
showing by their voluntary acts that they are ready to 
suffer and die in the cause of freedom ; while other multi- 
tudes, equal in number, permit themselves to be driven 
to wounds and death in the cause of effective discipline, 
force, and domination. On both sides, millions of men 
are exhibiting extraordinary self-sacrifice and devotion, 


226 A OCATE HARVEST 


natural fruits of the spirit of Jesus Christ ; but most of 
these heroes have not consciously derived these lofty 
sentiments from the Christian churches, but are moved 
by the common loves of family, home, and country. 
For two generations the men that have been doing, 
and are now doing, the work of the world have, in large 
measure, withdrawn from the organized churches, or 
maintain but a nominal connection with them —a 
connection, however, which often includes considerable 
payments to the churches on behalf or their wives and 
children. Educated men as a rule, in both Europe and 
America, have ceased to be influenced in their opinions 
or their actions by the dogmas of the churches, by the 
rewards churches offer, or by the punishments they 
threaten. Sunday has become a day for physical rest, 
for outdoor refreshment, for attention to the family, or 
for the enjoyment of music — sometimes at the church, 
but oftener at the club, the park, or the concert hall. 
With trifling exceptions, the church is no longer the 
centre of social recognition or of social enjoyments for 
the multitude. The granges and trades-unions, the 
neighborhood houses, and the numerous beneficial socie- 
ties provide in many communities the needed oppor- 
tunities for social intercourse which church meetings 
used to provide. In former times the Christian churches 
were the almoners for the poor and desolate; and the 
chief works of mercy were carried on by men and 
women especially commissioned by the Christian 
church. Now, secular societies, administered by lay- 
men, carry on many of the principal movements for the 


NEED OF RENEWED CHRISTIANITY 227 


improvement of society — such as the Civil Service 
Reform Leagues, the Playground Associations, the 
Young Men’s and Young Women’s Christian Associa- 
tions, and the Associations for Baby, School, Social, 
and Mental Hygiene; and many of the hospitals, dis- 
pensaries, and asylums, whether supported by taxation 
or by the voluntary contributions of public-spirited 
persons, are the works of people whose motive power is 
not derived from churches. To be sure, many churches 
have, of late, taken up some kinds of social work; but 
in such labors the churches are as a rule less effective 
than the lay societies. Even in its function of teaching 
children what religion is, what right conduct is, and 
what the motives are which lead to right conduct, the 
Church has much to learn. The Sunday School does not 
compare favorably in method or results with the week- 
day school, even as a teacher of elementary ethics; for 
it often lacks sound methods, adequate time, and the 
support of parents. 

The fundamental trouble is that the Christian 
churches, as instituted and organized, have relied for 
centuries on imposed beliefs, rites, sacraments, sym- 
bols, and observances. Since the latter years of the 
eighteenth century, it has become more and more diffi- 
cult to impose beliefs on educated people; and intelli- 
gent men have steadily lost faith in mysticism, symbol- 
ism, and sacerdotalism, and have come to rely more and 
more on the careful ascertainment of facts, the human 
reason, and the natural sentiments of reverence and 
love. They have also come to prefer for themselves 


228 A LATE HARVEST 


and their families liberty, independence, and public 
order founded on agreed-upon law, to obedience, sub- 
mission, and order founded on discipline administered 
to the many by the few. With these new tendencies of 
the human spirit the great Christian churches are not 
in full accord. 

The great Christian churches have always supported 
the claim of absolute monarchs that they rule by Divine 
right ; but in the modern world only ignorant or archaic 
persons accept that doctrine. The mystic has always 
believed that in some unimaginable way he is the recipi- 
ent, on occasion, of direct revelations from God through 
faculties or means of perception in himself which are 
instinctive rather than reasonable; but the advance in 
man’s knowledge of nature, and in his power to apply 
to his own uses the natural forces, has made it harder 
than it used to be for an intelligent man to be a mystic. 
The thinking person who ts enduring a life of suffering 
now, on this earth, is much less disposed than he used 
to be to accept as a real consolation another imagined 
life free from the struggles and pains of the present life. 
In other words, the consolations and hopes which the 
Christian churches have heretofore imparted to suffer- 
ing human beings are to-day far less efficacious than 
they were in the first eighteen centuries. Neither the 
heaven nor the hell of the Christian churches appeals 
to the modern man as it formerly did to his predecessors. 

The condition of Europe at this moment is the last 
and most convincing demonstration that the great 
churches of Christendom have lost their power to keep 
man from sin, to guide him on an upward path, and to 


NEED OF RENEWED CHRISTIANITY 229 


make him happy; for the churches are helpless in the 
presence of this terrible mass of long-planned, elabo- 
rately contrived human sin, shame, and _ suffering, 
although the mass is shot through by splendid gleams 
of courage, self-sacrifice, and patriotic devotion. 

The religious state of Christendom to-day is therefore 
in need of a genuine revival. Mankind needs to wor- 
ship, needs incitements to love, reverence, and duty, 
and a happy spiritual conception of the universe. 
Without these helps, man cannot possibly be happy in 
his family, his labor, or his social order. Without these 
conceptions of the finite and the infinite values, man 
cannot rise 1n his nature or his life from bad to good, and 
from good to better. No single personality born in 
Christendom — and no class of persons —can reach 
his best without accepting as his guides in life the funda- 
mental teachings of Jesus Christ — love God and thy 
neighbor, have compassion on the wronged and the 
desolate, seek the truth that frees, and worship God in 
spirit and in truth. To live in this way, it is not neces- 
sary to accept any of the dogmas of the great churches, 
or any part of their symbolism or ritualism. Indeed, 
much of their symbolism, ritualism, dogmatism, and 
ecclesiasticism is inconsistent with essential obedience 
to the precepts of Jesus Christ. 

What then is the renewed Christianity which these 
terrible times we are living in cry out for in the midst 
of tears and heartbreaking sorrows? It is a Christianity 
which abandons the errors and the unjust, cruel con- 
ceptions which the centuries have piled up on the 
simple teachings of Jesus. It is a Christianity which 


230 A LATE HARVEST 


sympathizes with and supports the aspirations of man- 
kind for freedom — freedom in thought, speech, and 
action — and completely abandons authoritative eccle- 
siasticism and governmental despotism. It is a Chris- 
tianity which hallows and consecrates birth, marriage, 
the bringing up of children, family life, the earning of 
a livelihood, and death, and rejects all the aspersions 
on the natural life of man which Christianity inherited 
from paganism and Judaism. It is a Christianity which 
will be the friend and ally of all that is good and enno- 
bling in literature, science, and art, and will avail itself 
without fear of all the new means of teaching and help- 
ing men which successive generations shall discover, 
and of all the innocent enjoyments and social pleasures, 
while resisting effectively every unwholesome or degrad- 
ing influence on human society. It is a Christianity 
which will recognize that the pursuit of happiness in 
this world is legitimate for every human being, and that 
the main function of government is to protect and 
further men in that pursuit by securing to the com- 
munity health, education, wholesome productive labor, 
and liberty. 

Do you ask if there exist in the world any exemplars 
of this sort of Christianity ? Fortunately for the future 
of the world, there are to be found in nearly every 
Christian communion individuals who illustrate in 
their personal lives the purity and power of the simple 
religion taught by Jesus Christ. Many of these persons 
are quite unconscious of the embarrassments which the 
creeds, rituals, dogmas, and discipline of their respec- 


NEED OF RENEWED CHRISTIANITY 231 


tive churches would inflict on their candid minds, if they 
realized, or apprehended in clear and logical statements, 
the meaning of the traditional doctrines and rites of 
their churches. Finding themselves practically free to 
do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with their God, 
they remain in the churches into which they were born, 
held there by family ties, sweet associations, or con- 
servative sentiment, and inattentive to the inconsist- 
encies between their life of the spirit and the historical 
doctrines of the churches to which they belong. They 
are all exemplars of the renewed Christianity of which 
there is such crying need; and many of them are active 
promotors of that renewal. 

The liberal churches of Protestantism are, however, 
the best exemplars of renewed Christianity; because 
they have definitely abandoned the official creeds and 
dogmas of the past, all ecclesiasticism, and almost all 
symbolism and ritualism. Their membership, modest 
in number and little disposed to proselytism, consists 
exclusively of persons who propose to be free, simple, 
and candid in their religious thought, and in all expres- 
sions of that thought. These independent churches lay 
the emphasis on character and conduct, and are con- 
cerned with the tendencies and practices of their mem- 
bers in daily action, rather than with the beliefs of their 
fellowship. 

After all, true Christianity is not a body of doctrines, 
or an official organization to direct and control men’s 
minds and wills. It is a way of life. 


A FREE AND OPEN CHRISTIAN CHURCH} 


We have come hither in mass, first, to rejoice and give 
thanks together for our deliverance from all the creeds, 
confessions, and dogmas of the older churches and 
denominations, and from thosé conceptions of Deity 
which are implied in the words “propitiation,” “‘expia- 
tion,’ and “vicarious atonement’’; and secondly, to 
congratulate each other that we are able to reverence 
all saintly lives and to treat with respect all sincere 
religious beliefs, no matter how different the beliefs may 
be from our own, and no matter how different from our 
own may be the external manifestations of saintliness. 
This freedom to respect the practical usefulness of a 
great variety of religious beliefs is one of our most 
valued privileges. 

We also have come together here with the purpose of 
proclaiming what the affirmative or positive beliefs 
are which inspire the Unitarian churches, and guide 
Unitarians in the conduct of their lives. We wish to 
do this, because we recognize the plain fact that no 
religion and no religious denomination can be greatly 
useful to society and civilization unless it is animated 
by warm, positive convictions carried into practice. 
Ours is no cool and negative religion. On the contrary, 
it is a steady fire, a glowing hope, an invigorating 
inspiration. 


1 Address at Symphony Hall, Boston, February 4, 1917. 


A FREE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 233 


We believe in a loving God who inspires and vivifies 

the universe, and to that God we attribute in an infinite 
degree all the finest, noblest, sweetest, loveliest qualities 
which human nature embodies and displays in finite 
forms. For us God is not a despotic ruler, a judge, just 
or unjust, or a lord of embattled hosts. He is for us a 
Father Divine; and the word “father”’ signifies for us 
the best human combination of justice, tenderness, 
and intimate sympathy. 
_ We Unitarians believe in the essential dignity and 
goodness of human nature; and Boston is the place to 
reafirm that belief, for here Channing preached that 
fundamental doctrine in purest form. 

For and with fellow men we believe in good will, 
coéperation for common ends, and freedom from all 
restraints and subjections except those involved in 
preserving the same freedom for the neighbor. 

We recognize that there are great evils in the world; 
but we refuse to accept them as inevitable, and we 
combat them with every form of intelligent human 
effort, and with every means which modern science puts 
into our hands. 

We believe in the prevention of evil by destroying 
its spawn and digging up its roots, and in educating 
and reforming the wrongdoer rather than merely pun- 
ishing him. 

We recognize that human wills are often weak, and 
human bodies and minds often defective; but we do 
not infer thence that the human race is depraved, and 
is to be controlled and redeemed only by fear or terror. 


234 A LATE HARVEST 


We believe that mankind would get along better 
than they do now, if it were positively known that the 
heaven of Revelation had been burned and _ hell 
quenched. 

With all our hearts we believe in, and would fain 
imitate the Good Samaritan, the father of the prodigal 
son, Martha and Mary, — especially Martha, — the 
publican who would not so much as lift up his eyes unto 
heaven, the poor widow who cast in two mites, and that 
disciple whom Jesus loved and to whom he said as he 
hung on the cross, “‘ ‘Behold thy mother!’ And from 
that hour the disciple took her to his own home.” 

We believe in the lilies of the field, and accept their 
testimony to the nature of the God that made them so 
beautiful, and us capable of enjoying them. 

We believe in the little children of whom Jesus 
said, ““Of such are the kingdom of heaven,” and in 
that kind of heaven. 

We believe most earnestly and completely in the 
Beatitudes, the Lord’s Prayer, and the rule: “‘Whatso- 
ever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so 
to them.” 

We believe that all men need to reverence, to worship, 
and to love. 

We believe in the spiritual interpretations and sanc- 
tions of duty, obligation, and responsibility. 

We believe that to whom much is given, of them 
much is expected or required; and that the sense of 
obligation is strongest in a grateful conscience. 

For Unitarians, these beliefs are as warm and inspir- - 


A FREE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 235 


ing and as fruitful in character and conduct as any the 
world knows. 

Therefore, we mean and try to love God and our 
neighbor, to love mercy, to help the desolate and the 
wronged, to seek the truth, and, finding any, to speak 
it and act it out. 

Finally, this meeting, held at a time when the whole 
world has been witnessing the complete failure of all 
the established Christian institutions founded on Ro- 
man imperialism, the feudal system, compromises in 
barbaric councils, and the historical creeds and confes- 
sions, to prevent or to mitigate the most horrible out- 
break of savagery the world has ever known, hopes to 
suggest to the unchurched millions in this country and 
to the other millions who are restless in the churches 
to which they belong through inheritance or through 
beloved associations, that there exists in the world 
another church, open and free from all bonds of opinion 
or belief, in which honest minds and loving hearts may 
find support in the high enterprise of living a candid 
intellectual life and a sincere religious life, a church 
which sanctifies and blesses by prayer and praise the 
great events of common human life, — birth, marriage, 
and death, — a church which prompts all its members 
to serviceable and honorable lives, and to communion 
with sweet and noble souls, living or dead, and with 
the God of whom Jesus said, “God is a Spirit, and they 
that worship him must worship him in spirit and in 
cutie 

Every living church is a fellowship. Listen to the 


236 A LATE HARVEST 


simple terms on which any youth or maiden, any man 
or woman, any family or group of families may join 
any Unitarian church: “In the freedom of truth, and 
in the spirit of Jesus Christ, we unite for the worship 
of God and the service of man.’’ Listen to this state- 
ment of the Unitarian faith, our only confession: ‘“‘The 
Fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of Man, the 
Leadership of Jesus, Salvation by Character, the 
Progress of Mankind onward and upward forever.”’ 

In these days of disastrous failure on the part of the 
established religions and of profound disappointment 
for their adherents, we hear many people saying that 
there is no place in the world — and never has been — 
for an open, free, unauthoritative Christianity, and 
that most people prefer to have their religion prescribed 
by Deity direct, or by Deity through a supernaturally 
directed Church, or by an inspired priesthood. Uni- 
tarians admit that there are many persons of that way 
of thinking, which is often hereditary or traditional, 
and they are quite aware that such persons do not belong 
in their fellowship, and would not be comfortable in it; 
but Unitarians also think they see three great new 
forces at work which will before long produce multi- 
tudes of adherents for an open Christian Church in 
which dogmatism, supernaturalism, and _ ecclesiasti- 
cism have no place. These three forces are: the mod- 
ern religious poetry, the triumphant truth-seeking of 
Science in all its branches or departments, and the 
advancing democracy in governments, industries, and 
all civilized society. 


THE JOYFUL DUTY OF THE LAYMAN TO 
THE MODERN CHURCH IN THE WORSHIP 
OF GOD AND THE SERVICE OF MAN} 


I HEARD a text just now in the Scripture reading of 
‘the day: — “We are all members one of another.” 
The first remark I want to make is that the proclama- 
tion? to which we have just listened is a layman’s work, 
conspicuously so, although it breathes a religious spirit. 
In the Middle Ages the people — the working, op- 
pressed people — owed all their holidays and pageants 
to the Church. How is it to-day? The people owe all 
their holidays in this country to the civil power, and 
not to any ecclesiastical power. And the Governor’s 
proclamation is an evidence, an example, of that fact. 
Let us first, before we begin to consider the duties of 
laymen toward the church and the services of the 
church toward laymen, arrive at a clear understanding 
of what “layman” means. It has two senses, both 
important. In the first place, a layman is a unit in the 
great mass of the people, the laity as distinguished from 
the clerics, from the ministers, the priests, the nuns, 
the men and women whose lives are devoted to religious 
services, to religious duties, and to the government and 
guidance of men through their religious beliefs. In 
1 Sermon delivered on Laymen’s Sunday, November 20, 1921, in 
the First Parish in Cambridge, Mass. From The Christian Register, 


December I, 1921. 
2A Thanksgiving proclamation. 


238 ALA DE FARV EST 


the next place, the word “‘layman”’ means also a person 
who is not a member of a special profession which is 
under consideration. For instance, a layman may be 
contributing greatly to the progress of the medical art, 
and to the quality of the medical profession, not being 
himself a member of that profession. Toward that pro- 
fession he is a layman. And it is extraordinary what 
contributions to the progress of medicine have pro- 
ceeded from laymen, — laymen to that profession, — 
especially within the last sixty years. Pasteur and 
Roentgen were laymen with respect to the medical pro- 
fession, and yet what wonderful contributions those 
two men made to the progress of medicine! Let us keep 
clearly in mind, then, the two significations of the word 
“layman” as I develop my subject. 

The next fact to which I want to call your attention 
is the extraordinary increase in the power of laymen in 
both senses, in the influence of laymen on the progress 
of human society within the last hundred years. That 
progress will be the wonder of the ages, the progress of 
human society in the last hundred years. And to that 
progress laymen have contributed much more, immeas- 
urably more, than in any previous centuries or any 
previous thousand of years. 

Where does this contribution of laymen to the prog- 
ress of society chiefly appear? In the first place, it 
appears in the great source of human growth and human 
delights — in family life. It appears very strikingly in 
the influence of laymen on the new conception of 
marriage. Marriage has been in all times a religious rite. 


JOYFUL DUTY OF THE LAYMAN » 239 


It was only the Church, under all the principal religions, 
that could sanctify marriage. And yet laymen have 
contributed wonderfully to the sanctification of mar- 
riage within the last hundred years. They have intro- 
duced, in fact, a new conception of the holiness of 
marriage, the holiness of the codperation of a man and 
-a woman in God’s creative work. 

Where does that wonderful influence appear most in 
our day? It appears in the transformation of the 
thoughts of men and women about the birth or the 
creation of a child, and about the function of bringing 
up children. You remember what the Hebrew concep- 
tion of birth was. When Mary brought forth Jesus, the 
infant Jesus, she had to resort to the Temple and offer 
gifts or sacrifices there for her own purification from 
this corrupt and corrupting process. The Christian 
churches have with few exceptions taught persistently 
for nineteen hundred years that man is altogether born 
in sin. The Roman Church teaches, and many other 
churches called Christian teach, that a baby must be 
baptized or christened as soon as possible by a religious 
service, else it may go to hell — go to hell by dying 
before it has been baptized or christened. Think of 
that! Think what a horrible doctrine has been preached 
all over Christendom with regard to the birth of a child 
and its moral condition ! 

How have we begun to escape from those concep- 
tions? Through the influence of laymen preaching the 
opposite doctrine — that man is not born in sin, that 
the process of creating a child is a pure, indeed a sacred 


240 A LATE HARVEST 


process, and that the bringing up of children is the best 
work that either man or woman can do in this world. 

Let me point this doctrine by reminding you that 
Jesus was a layman; and not only a layman but an 
extraordinarily aggressive layman against the priests of 
his day, the church of his day, against the Scribes and 
Pharisees. What fiercer condemnation of a clerical 
class, of a church, could there be than that he uttered 
against the Scribes and Pharisees, “hypocrites who 
devour widows’ houses and for a pretence make long 
prayers’?! How his scorn for the priest and the Levite 
who ‘‘passed by on the other side” still rings through 
the world in the parable of the Good Samaritan! What 
stronger action against the profaning of a house of God 
could any man have taken than he took when he went 
into the temple and drove away the money-changers 
and traders, and said to them, “Ye have made my 
Father’s house a den of thieves.” 

We often think of Jesus as the great peacemaker. 
He said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” But he also 
said, ‘I came not to bring peace, but a sword.” And 
his death was probably caused by the violence with 
which he proceeded against those money-changers and 
traders in the temple. Let us remember that Jesus 
Christ was a layman —a layman by education, by 
trade, one may say. He had followed the occupation of 
a carpenter. He must have been a remarkable child in 
precocity of learning; for he early learned to read 
Hebrew, a difficult achievement; and as a stripling he 
preached among the elders, to their amazement and 


JOYFUL DUTY’ OF THE LAYMAN |. 241 


delight. But still he remained through all his life a 
layman. 

What are the ways in which the laymen of to-day are 
exerting a beneficent influence, through the church 
often, but often also without support from the church? 
‘In the first place, let us consider what the laymen are 
doing in the family, in sweetening family life, in bring- 
ing tenderness, reverence, gentleness into the lives of 
husband and wife and of parents with children. Is it 
the church to which we must attribute the great im- 
provement and growth in these directions during the 
last hundred years? No, we must attribute it to the 
laymen and laywomen. 

Of course the church, on the other hand, brings great 
support to sound family life by inculcating through 
its weekly or daily services the prime virtues in children 
and their parents. It is a great blessing to a family that 
they can come and bring their children to the church 
services, and send them to the Sunday School exercises. 
We just heard announced a Sunday School method in 
this church which attracts children to scenes in religious 
history and to religious dramas, and encourages the 
children to take part in the production of such plays. 
That is a delightful extension of the new methods 
adopted in progressive schools for winning the interest 
and exciting the activity of children in secular subjects. 
Think what it means to the laymen themselves and the 
laywomen to have the opportunity to go into a church 
and sit for an hour thinking about their parents, their 
ancestors, their relations, their friendships, thinking 


242 A LATE HARVEST 


about the good they can do if they try, cherishing the 
‘sacred memories of the past, and eager hopes in like 
directions for the future! 

In one phrase of the responsive reading which we just 
took part in, it was said that men ought “‘to do justly, 
love mercy, and walk humbly with their God.” “Walk 
humbly with their God.”’ The church gives to the lay- 
men that blessed opportunity of walking with their God. 
How delightful is that word, “walk” with God! That 
is just what fathers and mothers ought to do with their 
children and children with their parents — walk with 
them. We twentieth-century Christians do not pros- 
trate ourselves betore God as the Mohammedans do, 
and some Christians still do, but walk with God in 
intimate and loving communion. 

The contributions which the laymen have made to 
the sanctity, tenderness, and joyousness of domestic 
life and to happy thought of God would be enough, if 
they were all the contributions of laymen to modern 
life, to human society as organized to-day. But they are 
only the beginning. 

What mighty changes have been coming about in the 
constitution of human society within the past hundred 
years, brought in by laymen! In the first place, an 
immense increase in what are called good works for 
human society, good works, on every hand, of educa- 
tion, charity, and defense against ancient evils, carried 
on by laymen, and better carried on by laymen than 
they ever were by priests. Take hospitals, for example. 
Hospitals have fallen almost entirely into the hands 


JOYRULZ DUTY Oh THE LAYMAN? 17943 


of laymen, with great benefit to society. Take the spirit 
of cooperation between masters and servants, between 
managers or owners and employees, which is mani- 
festing itself so strikingly to-day. That is an achieve- 
ment which has proceeded from laymen, moved, to be 
sure, by religious impulses. What is this sudden access 
of hope for the coming of permanent peace? That is the 
work of laymen, moved, to be sure, by a tremendous 
religious impulse. 

I want to say a few words about one special aspect 
of laymen’s work. The greater number of this congrega- 
tion are members of Unitarian churches, who have all 
been looking during the last four years at the rise and 
growth of the Unitarian Laymen’s League, a very inter- 
esting and constructive body. That body of active men 
is making an effort in one particular direction, the most 
interesting direction, to my thinking, for benevolent 
and religious action to-day. They are making an effort 
in the direction of getting the millions upon millions of 
unchurched people in our country into some form of 
church. These fifty millions of people or more have 
abandoned the churches in which they were brought up 
or in which their fathers were brought up, abandoned 
them completely, and have no place to go to for reli- 
gious inspiration and encouragement. That is just the 
state of mind of a large proportion of these unchurched 
people. They feel that they have no place to go to; 
and they are right in many respects in holding that 
position, because the large Christian churches present 
insuperable obstacles to admission to or reunion with 


244 A LATE HARVEST 


the church — insuperable obstacles. What are those 
obstacles? The shocking notions about God which 
those churches preach, the beliefs or creeds or dogmas 
which those churches present as conditions of admission 
to the church. They are not intended for obstacles. 
There have been times in the past when they did not 
seem to be obstacles. But now they are obstacles to the 
return of the unchurched to the Evangelical churches 
of to-day. The Unitarian Church presents no such 
obstacles. There are no terms of admission or any 
beliefs necessary for admission to the Unitarian or 
Universalist churches. 

The Unitarian Laymen’s League has set out to help 
' this enormous mass of the unchurched. It must be 
done by personal influence, by seeking out the families 
that feel the need of religious fellowship but do not 
know where to find it. This seems to me the urgent 
duty of both Unitarian laymen and Unitarian ministers 
at the present moment. For is it not clear, have not 
events of the last seven years convinced us all, that man 
is at bottom inevitably a religious being, and that he 
cannot reach his best, he cannot even avoid his worst, 
unless he gives play and expression to his religious 
spirit, and opens his heart and his life to the spirit of 
God? The shuddering world needs a new religion 
framed on the plain teachings of Jesus, led by his living 
example, and thronged by the laity — men, women, 
and children — joyously in it, heart and soul. 


THE COUNTRY AND THE WORLD 





WHAT IS AN AMERICAN? } 


In the first place, the American is the product of cer- 
tain moral inheritances. He is usually the descendant 
of an immigrant or an immigrant himself. That immi- 
grant, in many cases, was escaping from some sort of 
religious, political, social, or economic oppression. 
He was some kind of nonconformist; and he was dis- 
satisfied with his surroundings and wished to better 
them. Therefore he must have had an unusual amount 
of imagination, ambition, and venturesomeness. This 
is as true of the late comers to America as of the earlier 
comers. The English Pilgrims and Puritans, the French 
Huguenots, the Scotch Covenanters, the Moravians, 
the Quakers, the Russian Jews, the Armenians, and 
the Syrian Christians all fled from religious hostilities 
or restrictions, and meant to secure, or expected to find, 
in the New World freedom to worship God each in his 
own way. They found that liberty, and ultimately 
established in the United States a regime of absolute 
religious toleration. After 1848 a large German immi- 
gration took refuge here from political oppression. 
Millions of European and Near-Eastern people have 
crossed the Atlantic and taken the serious risk of at- 
tempting to secure a foothold in fresh and free America, 
because they hoped to escape from economic pressure 
and chronic poverty. They have exiled themselves from 


1 From Collier’s Weekly, August 1916. 


248 A LATE HARVEST 


home and friends in search of some better opportunity 
for a successful and happy life than the native land 
offered. The migrations of the Irish and the Scotch 
Highlanders have been strong cases of escape from 
harassing economic and social conditions. The early 
comers took the risks of the wilderness, the Indians, 
the untried climate, and the unknown diseases. The 
late comers have dared the perils of congested cities, 
of novel industries, and of insecure employment. 
Hence, by heredity, the white Americans of to-day — 
of whatever race or stock — have a fair chance to be . 
by nature independent, bold, and enterprising. 

In the second place, the environment of the immi- 
grants into North America during the past three centu- 
ries has exerted a common influence on them all, which 
has tended to produce in the successive generations 
certain advantageous qualities. All the American gener- 
ations thus far may fairly be said to have done pioneer- 
ing work, and all the earlier generations lived a life of 
conflict with the hostilities of adverse Nature and with 
hostile human beings, both savage and civilized. Such 
pioneering and such conflict all across a continent 
supply men and women alike with a strenuous training. 

The American colonies were engaged most of the time 
in some kind of warfare. From the beginning the Ameri- 
can settlers carried arms, and were often called upon 
to defend their homes and their communities. The 
Massachusetts Puritan farmer carried his flintlock 
with him to the meetinghouse, and the frontier 
settler has always had firearms in his cabin and 
has taught his boys how to use them. 


WHAT IS AN AMERICAN 249 


In the nineteenth century the United States was 
involved four times in costly war. No American genera- 
tion has escaped the discipline of war. Among the most 
recent immigrants from Southern Europe and the Near 
East there have been many thousands of young men 
who, before they had really established themselves in 
the New World, returned home to bear their part in 
the present agonies of the Old. An American, therefore, 
is likely to be a man of individualistic quality, who 
nevertheless possesses a strong community-sense and 
is ready to fight in defense of his family and his com- 
munity. His environment has trained him to energetic 
industry, sharp conflict with natural obstacles, and the 
use of protective force. Nevertheless, his inheritance 
and his environment alike predispose him to condemn 
military establishments, a military class, and militarism 
in general. He is, and means to be, a freeman. 

A genuine American regards his Government as his 
servant and not as his master, and will have no chief 
executive in city, state, or nation except an elected 
executive. He recognizes that men are not equal as 
regards native capacity or acquired power, but desires 
that all men shall be equal before the law and that 
every individual human being — child or adult — shall 
have his just opportunity to do his best for the com- 
mon good. He believes in universal education, and is 
_always desiring the improvement of the free schools. 
In respect to this desire for education, however, many 
of the most recent Americans outdo some of the 
earlier ones — particularly in the zeal and assiduity 
of their children in school. 


250 A LATE HARVEST 


As a result of his own experience in public affairs and 
of his ancestors’ experience, a true American always 
acquiesces in the decision of a majority of the legitimate 
participants in an election or other public contest. This 
is an American trait of high political value. It makes 
‘American political and social progress, as a rule, a peace- 
ful evolution. People who have long been helpless under 
political or ecclesiastical oppression, and have had no 
practice in self-government, have difficulty in acquiring 
this trait. 

The characteristic American believes, first, in justice 
as the foundation of civilized government and society, 
and next in freedom for the individual, so far as that 
freedom is possible without interference with the equal 
rights of others. He conceives that both justice and 
freedom are to be secured through popular respect for 
the laws enacted by the elected representatives of the 
people and through the faithful observance of those 
laws ; and because of his confidence in law as the enact- 
ment of justice and the security for freedom, he utterly 
condemns all lawless practices by public servants, 
private citizens, or groups of citizens. For him lawless 
violence is the worst offense which can be committed 
by either the governors or the governed. Hence he 
distrusts legislation which is not faithfully executed, 
and believes that unsuccessful legislation should not 
lapse, but be repealed or replaced. It should be ob- 
served, however, that American justice in general keeps 
in view the present common good of the vast majority, 
and the restoration rather than the punishment of the 


WHAT IS AN AMERICAN 251 


exceptional malignant or defective individual. Indeed, 
the American conception of justice is very different 
from that of traditional Christian theology, or of feu- 
dal institutions, or of any of the despotic governments. 
It is essentially democratic; and especially it finds 
sufferings inflicted on the innocent unintelligible and 
abhorrent. 

The American believes that if men are left free in the 
planning and conduct of their lives they will win more 
success in the professions, the trades, and the industries 
than they will if their lives are regulated for them by 
some superior power, even if that power be more intelli- 
gent and better informed than they. Blind obedience 
and implicit submission to the will of another do not 
commend themselves to characteristic Americans. The 
discipline in which they believe is the voluntary codper- 
ation of several or many persons in the orderly and 
effective pursuit of common ends. Yet Americans are 
capable of intense collective action when they see that 
such action is necessary to efficiency or to the security 
of the community as a whole. Thus they submit will- 
ingly to any restrictions on individual liberty which can 
be shown to be necessary to the preservation of the 
public health, and they are capable of the most effective 
codperation at need in business, sports, and war. 

Such are the common ideals, hopes, and aims of the 
heterogeneous peoples assembled on the territory of the 
United States. Whoever accepts them and governs his 
life by them is an American, whatever his origin, race, 
or station. No other assimilation of different national 


252 A LATE HARVEST 


stocks is needed — or is even desirable — than this 
acceptance of the common American ideals; but with 
this acceptance should go, and ordinarily does go, an 
ardent love of the new country and its liberal institu- 
tions, a love not inconsistent with an affectionate regard 
for the old country from which the original immigrant 
into America took his resolute departure. 


ZIONISM! 


To the Christian friends of the Jewish people the most 
interesting question about the Zionist movement is 
‘whether it can contribute to the eradication of the un- 
desirable qualities in Jews that have resulted from the 
century-long persecution to which they have been sub- 
jected in the European and Asiatic countries through 
which they have been scattered. The condition of the 
Jews in Europe has been terribly depressing and en- 
feebling for many centuries, but in Asia it has been 
even worse; indeed, it has been there one of utter 
misery. 

The worst features of these persecutions have been 
first, the practical exclusion of the Jews from many of 
the best trades and occupations, best, that is, in their 
physical and moral effects; secondly, their confinement 
to certain parts of a closely built city or town, districts 
which were overcrowded and unwholesome, especially 
in walled towns; thirdly, their liability at any time to 
murderous attacks on them by the Christian populace 
who so outnumbered them that resistance seemed im- 
possible; and fourthly, from the times of the Roman 
Empire, their exclusion from the exercise of judicial 
and administrative functions and from the privilege or 
function of bearing arms, a very serious injury to the 
character and progress of any people. 


‘From The Maccabean, August 1919. 


264 A LATE HARVEST 


The exclusion from the best trades and occupations 
was perhaps the worst of these afflictions, because of its 
inevitable effect on the character of the Jewish people. 
The Jews ceased to be cultivators of the land, for 
example. They could not follow, or follow to advantage, 
any of the primary trades, like those of the carpenter, 
mason, blacksmith, wheelwright, farmer, and sailor. 
They were forced to become small shopkeepers, peddlers, 
and money-lenders when they had by skill or good 
fortune accumulated a little money. 

Secondly, the confinement of Jews within the Jewish 
pale had ill effects on the bodily and mental qualities of 
the people. It limited travel, commercial and financial 
intercourse, and the spirit of adventure, important ele- 
ments in the education of any people. Confinement to 
the Ghetto in towns and cities was a still more injurious 
limitation. It made the Jews an urban population 
rather than a rural, and subjected them to all the 
physical and moral evils which accompany congestion 
of population. 

Thirdly, the liability to sudden attacks from their 
Christian neighbors, attacks they had neither the means 
nor the disposition to resist by force, since they had no 
right to bear arms, had the inevitable depressing effect 
on the spirit of the people. They were liable not only 
to be killed, men, women, and children together, but 
to be driven from their homes by enactments of rulers 
or by mere mob violence; although in various European 
countries there were brief intervals during which the 
Jews enjoyed peace and some degree of liberty. These 


ZIONISM 2h 


intervals, however, seldom extended over more than 
one reign or generation. 

These very trying conditions, under which the exiled 
Jewish people have lived for many centuries, have had 
serious effects on the physique of the race. Having been 
excluded from most of the occupations which require 
varied muscular effort, and having had no access to the 
out-of-door sports or military training which might 
have protected them from some of the evils resulting 
from indoor life and loss of exercise, many Jews came 
to have feeble, stunted, undeveloped bodies, and morbid 
nervous systems. This result is conspicuous to-day 
wherever Jews gather together by hundreds or thou- 
sands. At this moment, in countries where active 
oppression of the Jews long since ceased, the Jewish 
element of the population is dreaded at all the large 
public and private hospitals and dispensaries because it 
provides so many neurasthenic patients, the treatment 
of whom is always prolonged and tedious and not 
infrequently unsuccessful. The occupations which the 
Jews were allowed to follow among the Christian peoples 
of Europe were, with the exception of peddling, indoor 
occupations which had no invigorating effect on the 
body. In addition to the purely physical effects, their 
deprivations had a decided effect on their spirit or 
temperament. They were forced to conceal as much as 
possible their family life and their religious life; and 
they tended to become subservient rather than inde- 
pendent, submissive rather than resistant. They lacked 
the good elements in the martial spirit. They met the 


256 AYVLATE HARVEST 


indignities and cruelties to which they were subjected, 
not with indignant protest but with lamentations, both 
public and private. They held chiefly in remembrance 
the periods of Jewish history when their race was 
enslaved or exiled, rather than those during which it 
was an aggressive and conquering race. 

Their thoughtful men took refuge in the study of the 
great Hebrew literature, in teaching, in the practice of 
medicine, in the cultivation of music, and in the preser- 
vation of the dietetic, sanitary, and ceremonial tradi- 
tions of the race; but these occupations had to be pur- 
sued in isolation or even secrecy, and they were all of 
the kind that developed the nervous system and the 
emotions rather than the muscular system. They 
needed as atmosphere peace and quietness, not strife 
or the strenuousness of vigorous competition. 

Under their very peculiar industrial conditions, the 
Jews in all generations developed skill in buying at low 
prices and selling at high, and also skill in lending money 
at high rates to impecunious Christians; and they 
acquired among Christians a reputation for being grasp- 
ing and sharp in their money transactions. They were 
ready to lend money to persons who had nothing to 
furnish as security except their domestic animals or 
their household goods; and, when the borrowers could 
no longer pay the high rates of interest they had agreed 
to pay, they lost to the Jewish lenders the precious 
chattels they had pledged. This practice of lending 
money or giving credit to poor people, taking land, 
chattels, or crops not yet gathered as security, has 


ZIONISM 264 


always been highly inexpedient for Jews; but it is 
persisted in to this day in many parts of the world, as, 
for instance, by Jewish shopkeepers in the Southern 
States. 

Throughout the Middle Ages and down to compar- 
atively recent times, promising Jewish children could 
procure a better education than was to be had by any 
other race in Europe, because education was better 
preserved among the Jews than among any other con- 
stituent of the European population. Accordingly, the 
Jews were likely to excel their Christian neighbors in 
those intellectual occupations accessible to them; and 
here again was a source of exasperation against them as 
a race, and often of danger to them. 

Here we see important sources of modern prejudices 
against the Jewish race coming down the centuries. 
The present Christian generations of European and 
American origin dread the clannishness of the Hebrew 
people who live among them, their ingenuity and keen- 
ness in buying and selling, and their practical skill in 
banking and carrying on a great variety of trading 
operations, both wholesale and retail. In the countries 
where Jews are free, the Christians complain that, 
although the refined, educated, and public-spirited Jew 
is a thoroughly satisfactory friend and neighbor, the 
coarse, ignorant, ostentatious Jew is a peculiarly dis- 
agreeable product of free institutions, especially if he 
be newly rich. 

It is perfectly plain that both the noble and the 
ignoble qualities of a free Jewish population are 


258 A LATE HARVEST 


inevitable results of the life of the race during centuries 
of oppression and isolation, and that the cure for the 
evil can only be found in new centuries of freedom and 
education. The coming generations in all races are 
going to attend much more than past generations did 
to the suppression of the physical and moral evils which 
affect disastrously the public health and vitality, and 
to the means of securing vigor of body and independence 
of thought. Most of the Christian peoples put a high 
value on the fighting, courageous, adventurous spirit 
in a healthy man, and have good reason to do so, but 
this is the spirit which the Jewish people have had scant 
opportunities for developing during the last two thou- 
sand years. Valuable means of developing this spirit 
may be found in all kinds of manly sport, in the practice 
of trades which are exercised in the open air and require 
muscular power and manual skill, and in the cultivation 
in both sexes of open-air habits. All classes and condi- 
tions of men are making these new efforts to promote 
human welfare. By joining heartily in these efforts, 
and succeeding with them in their own case, the Jews 
will gradually win heartier respect and liking from their 
Gentile neighbors than are now accorded them, except 
to their highest types. 

Now comes the question whether the Zionist move- 
ment will provide an effective remedy for the results of 
the subjection and enfeeblement of the Jews during the 
past two thousand years, or at least for a part of the 
present and future generations, a part which may carry 
inspiration and encouragement to all the rest. 


ZIONISM 2659 


It is obvious that if a self-governing and self-support- 
ing Jewish community can be established under a 
British Protectorate in Palestine, the ancient seat of 
the race, it can repossess itself of all the fundamental 
trades and all the administrative and judicial offices, 
and organize from its own race all the protective forces 
which modern society needs, such as police for towns 
and cities, a gendarmery for rural districts, and a citizen 
army. It could establish for its own people return to 
rural life and perfect freedom of movement at home and 
abroad, and could prevent the physical and moral evils 
which accompany congestion of population. A numer- 
ous Jewish community in Palestine under a British 
Protectorate would, of course, be free, if the League of 
Nations is carried into effect, from foreign aggression 
of every sort, and from dangerous disorders within their 
own country. They would no longer need to hide their 
family life or their religious life, and would be subject 
to no social restrictions or embarrassments. They would 
be free to practise all the arts and sciences in which 
they now excel, and would add some from which they 
have been in many countries long excluded. 

Theoretically and sentimentally, therefore, the crea- 
tion of an independent Jewish community on their own. 
soil seems in the highest degree desirable. It is doubt-. 
less possible, though difficult. The difficulties are 
serious, but not insuperable, given an indefinite supply 
of money and engineering skill to build the artificial 
harbors and irrigation works which a proper commer- 
cial and agricultural development of Palestine would 


260 A LATE HARVEST 


require. The area of land in Palestine capable of pro- 
ducing wheat and other cereals without artificial irri- 
gation 1s too small to permit the creation of a sub- 
stantial and numerous farming class. The coast of 
Palestine has no harbors suitable for the export and 
import trade which a prosperous community would 
need to maintain. At present, the proportion of Jews 
in the population of Palestine 1s but small; so that a 
large immigration from other parts of the world would 
be necessary, and since the revolutions in Russia and 
Germany it is not clear whence this additional popula- 
tion could be derived. The relations of the new Jewish 
community to the Moslem and Christian populations 
of Palestine would be a subject for cautious experiment ; 
and it might take many years to get into practice 
successful relations. 

On the whole, the Zionist movement looks, to the 
Christian peoples among whom the Jews are free, like 
a great adventure for the honor and welfare of the 
Jewish race, based on firm historical foundations, racial, 
industrial, and religious, and informed by a spirit of 
national pride and courage. 


PROHIBITION ! 


I HAVE been sitting here all the evening, wondering at 
my very different state of mind from the state of mind 
of all those who have addressed you. I have had more 
than twenty years’ observation, as a scientific man, 
of the subject under discussion — prohibition or no 
prohibition. 

I remember well that, twenty years ago or there- 
abouts, I was entertained by the Harvard Club of 
Louisiana at a large dinner in the city of New Orleans, 
where I sat next to a gentleman who was generally 
recognized in New Orleans as the leader of their Bar. 
I noticed the moment we sat down that there was an 
extraordinary variety of things to drink on the table; 
and I also noticed that my neighbor took everything 
that was passed and in large quantity, so much so that 
I began to be a little anxious about his condition later. 
But suddenly he turned to me and said, “Mr. Presi- 
dent, do you know that the New Orleans Bar, and I as 
its leader, are going in for complete prohibition in the 
State of Louisiana?’’ I could not help expressing sur- 
prise that he was going in for that. Whereupon he said, 
“Well, you don’t suppose that we, the members of the 
Bar, expect to have the law applied to us, do you?” 


1 An address before The Economic Club of Boston, March 6, 1923. 
Reprinted from The Consensus, official organ of the National Eco- 
nomic League. 


262 A ‘LATE SHARVES & 


(Laughter) He was positively a vigorous advocate of 
complete prohibition for Louisiana, but all the time had 
not the slightest notion that a prohibitory law could be 
applied to him or any of his friends, or would be. 

That opened my eyes somewhat in regard to the 
expectation with which the sudden, unanimous support 
of prohibition came to pass in the Southern States. It 
was nearly unanimous, you remember, and remains so 
to this day. The Southern States are the strongest 
supporters in this country of prohibitory legislation. 

Then, some time later, I found myself attending a 
Harvard Club dinner in the State of Missouri. There 
were many things to drink at that dinner also. I was 
informed that some of the leading citizens of Missouri, 
engaged in manufacturing operations, were going to 
move their plants over into the State of Kansas. I 
observed later that a large number of Missouri manu- 
facturers did move their plants over into the State of 
Kansas, and learned, on inquiry, that those manu- 
facturers had made up their minds that they could con- 
duct their businesses much better in a State where a 
prohibitory law existed than they could in a State 
where that law did not exist. 

I have had the delight of passing my summers for 
more than forty years — yes, it is fifty-two years since 
I first began to go to Mount Desert in summer — in the 
State of Maine. There I observed that the prohibitory 
law in Maine was not observed at all excepting in com- 
munities where, as one guest has said to-night, the great 
majority of the population was in favor of prohibition. 


PROHIBITION 263 


There alone was the distribution of alcoholic drinks 
restrained. I lived there fifty summers, observing the 
fact that the prohibitory law in Maine was not gener- 
ally enforced; observing that the summer residents of 
the State of Maine, who, as you know, live all along the 
shore and in several of the beautiful lake regions, paid 
no attention to the prohibitory law. 

What inference did I draw from that experience? 
Simply that unless the strong majority of any govern- 
ment unit in the States where prohibitory laws exist 
was in favor of prohibition, the law would, as a matter 
of fact, not be enforced. 

- But further: It was obvious that no single State 
could possibly enforce prohibition, because it had no 
power to prevent the manufacture of alcoholic drinks 
outside the State or their importation into it. You 
must have national prohibition to make prohibition 
effective. It must be nation-wide, or it simply cannot 
be enforced. | 

So I supported for many years in Massachusetts, not 
prohibition, but local option; but then I learned that 
the sale of distilled liquors in saloons licensed to sell 
light wines and beer cannot be prevented. Nobody 
should advocate the repeal of the Volstead Act except 
those who believe in the unrestricted sale of alcoholic 
beverages. I ought perhaps to say that I took wine or 
beer when I was in the society of people who were using 
them. I never had any habit of drinking them at home; 
but I always took them when I was in the company of 
men or women who were using them. I had no feeling 


264 A LATE HARVEST 


that alcohol was bad for everybody, or bad for me. I 
never knew alcohol to do me any harm; but then I never 
drank distilled liquors at all. When the United States 
in the spring of 1917 went to war, you remember that 
with the support of all the best civilian authorities and 
of the officers in the Army and Navy, our Government 
enacted a prohibitory law for the regions surrounding 
the camps and barracks where the National Army was 
being assembled. The Act proved to be effective and 
highly beneficent. | 

Then I said to myself, “If that is the action of my 
Government to protect our soldiers and sailors prepar- 
ing to go to war, I think it is time for me to abstain from 
alcoholic drinks altogether.” It is only since 1917 that 
I have been a total abstainer; but that is now six years 
ago, and I want to testify here, now, that by adopting 
total abstinence, after having had the opposite habit 
for over seventy years, one loses no joys that are worth 
having, and there is no joy-killing about it. On the 
contrary, I enjoy social life and working life more since 
I ceased to take any alcohol than I did before. 

That talk, gentlemen, about joy-killing and pleasure- 
losing, and so forth, is absolute nonsense for a man who 
has any sense himself. | 

As I said, I have listened to all the speeches to-night 
and the answering of the questions with an increasing 
sense of the absolute difference beween my approach 
to this subject and the approaches of the speakers to 
whom you have listened. I approached the whole 
question from this point of view, simply: Here is a 


: PROHIBITION 265 


tremendous evil in the world. Of course, a compara- 
tively new evil. To be sure, we have read in sacred 
Scripture and in many other places, that the former 
generations of well-to-do men,'‘like Noah, for example, 
did, upon occasion, get drunk; but that fact is abso- 
lutely irrelevant in the present contest against the 
hideous evil which came into the world when Jamaica 
rum and whiskey, made from cheap grains, became 
accessible to all sorts of men and women. That is the 
source and starting point of this horrible modern evil 
of alcoholism and venereal disease — they go together 
— which has come upon the white race since, say, the 
fifteenth century. 

We all know that our Puritan ancestors and our 
Pilgrim ancestors were not persons who cultivated the 
finer joys of life. They left behind them the great 
architecture of England, and its parks and its music. 
The Pilgrims came over from Holland, having lived 
there for ten or fifteen years in sight of all the glorious 
Dutch paintings, sculpture, and architecture. They 
abandoned all those things, and settled in the wilder- 
ness, where there was little possibility of cultivating 
the love of beauty and little power, too, of resisting 
the theological dogmas they had imbibed, which taught 
that human nature was utterly depraved, and that most 
of the human race were bound for a fiery hell. 

Those are the people from whom the leading thinkers 
and doers of America sprang; and it is naturally inevi- 
table that we, their descendants, should lack the love 
of beauty in nature and in art, and even in music. We 


266 A LATE HARVEST 


do lack it. The Pilgrims and the Puritans lacked it to 
an extraordinary degree. 

Where did they find their pleasures? Largely in 
drink. They drank hard at weddings, funerals, and all 
public festivals. We have that inheritance, but can we 
not resist and overcome it? Can we not grow up into 
a love of beauty in nature and in art ? Can we not cultt- 
vate in ourselves the delight in music — 1n singing and 
in playing instruments? We are not hopeless in those 
respects; and those are the things we have got to learn 
to love, in order to escape from this wretched evil of 
alcoholism. 

But how shall we do it? We must cultivate in our- 
selves the finer inspirations, the purer delights, and the 
greater joys in art and in work. But, more than that, 
we have got to practise resistance to acknowledged 
manifest evils in our common life. 

That has always been my way of living, from day to 
day, in the practice of my profession. From the begin- 
ning, that was the way I lived. I attacked what seemed 
to me a plain, acknowledged, manifest evil, and advo- 
cated the best remedy I knew for that evil. That is just 
what we have got to do to-day, gentlemen, about this 
abominable evil of alcoholism associated with venereal 
disease; because that evil will kill us unless we kill it. 
By “us” I mean the white race, and particularly the 
American stock. Must we not accept the proposition 
that we must either destroy alcoholism and venereal 
disease, or those evils will destroy us? I believe that to 
be the plain truth; and I want to call on every lover of 


PROHIBITION 267 


his kindred and of his country, hourly, daily, year after 
year, to contend against these evils, alcoholism and 
venereal disease, until they are obliterated from the . 
world. Finally, may we not reasonably distrust the 
legal view that has been repeatedly presented here this 
evening, namely, that the rights and privileges of decent 
and vigorous people should not be abridged for the sake 
of indecent or weak people who abuse their privileges? 


THE NEXT AMERICAN CONTRIBUTION 
LO.\GIVIETZA TIONS 


In the summer of 1896 I gave an address at the original 
Chautauqua, created and conducted by Bishop John H. 
Vincent of the Methodist Episcopal Church, on “Five 
American Contributions to Civilization.” In the last 
paragraph but one of the address these five contribu- 
tions were succinctly described and characterized as 
follows : — 

“These five contributions to civilization — peace- 
keeping, religious toleration, the development of man- 
hood suffrage, the welcoming of newcomers, and the 
diffusion of well-being — I hold to have been eminently 
characteristic of our country, and so important that, in 
spite of the qualifications and deductions which every 
_ candid citizen would admit with regard to every one of 
them, they will ever be held in the grateful remembrance 
of mankind. They are reasonable grounds for a steady, 
glowing patriotism. They have had much to do, both as 
causes and as effects, with the material prosperity of the 
‘United States; but they are all five essentially moral 
' contributions, being triumphs of reason, enterprise, 
courage, faith, and justice, over passion, selfishness, 
inertness, timidity, and distrust. Beneath each one of 
these developments there lies a strong ethical sentiment, 
a strenuous moral and social purpose. It is for such 
work that multitudinous democracies are fit.” 

1 From Foreign Affairs, September 1922. 


AMERICA’S NEXT CONTRIBUTION 269 


I wished to emphasize in this paragraph that the five 
contributions were not material but moral; not evi- 
dences of a coarse and selfish materialism in the Ameri- 
can people, but on the contrary evidences of a good 
spiritual quality, as the result of their experience in 
political and social liberty and in chronic conflict with 
their various foes — some of them human beings, and 
some adverse forces of Nature. 

Ten years earlier, at the two hundred and fiftieth 
anniversary of the First Parish Church in Cambridge, 
in an address entitled ““Why We Honor the Puritans,” 
I had spoken near the end of the address as follows, try- 
ing to answer the question : Have we, the descendants of 
the Puritans, ideals for which we would toil, and suffer, 
and — 1f need be — die? 

“The Civil War gave one answer to that question. 
But I believe that in peace as well as in war our nation 
has shown that it has ideals for which it is ready to bear 
labor, pain, and loss. I believe that no people ever sees 
clearly those steps in its own progress, those events in 
its own life, which future generations will count glorious. 
Yet I think we can discern some moral ideals toward 
which our generation strives. We strive toward a pro- 
gressive improvement of human condition, an ameliora- 
tion of the average lot. We begin to get a realizing sense 
of that perfect democratic ideal: ‘We are members 
one of another.’ The gradual diminution of the exer- 
cise of arbitrary authority in the family, in education, 
and in government is another ideal toward which we 
press. We have come at last toreally believe that he that 
would be greatest among us must be our servant.” 


270 A LATE HARVEST 


The reason I gave in that address for honoring the 
Puritans was that they were ‘‘stout-hearted for an 
ideal, — not our ideal, but theirs, — their ideal of civil 
and religious liberty. Wherever and whenever resolute 
men and women devote their lives and fortunes not to 
material but to spiritual ends, there and then heroes are 
made, and, thank God, are made to be remembered. 
The Puritans thought to establish a theocracy; they 
stand in history as heroes of democracy.”’ 

When the late World War was only two months old, I 
published in the New York Times a letter on “True 
National Greatness.’ I remarked that “‘in North Amer- 
ica there are two large communities — heretofore in- 
spired chiefly by ideals of English origin — which have 
never maintained conscripted armies, and have never — 
fortified against each other their long frontier — Canada 
and the United States. Both may fairly be called great 
peoples even now; and both give ample promise for the 
future. Neither of these peoples lacks the “stout and 
warlike’ quality of which Sir Francis Bacon spoke!; both 
have often exhibited it.’’ And then I asked the ques- 
tion: What are the real ambitions and hopes of the 
people of the United States and the people of Canada 
in regard to their own future? I answered, in part : — 

“Their expectations of greatness certainly are not 
based on any conception of invincible military force or 
desire for the physical means of enforcing their own will 
on their neighbors. They both believe in the free com- 
monwealth, administered justly and with the purpose of 

1 True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates. 


AMERICA’S NEXT CONTRIBUTION 271 


securing for each individual all the freedom he can exer- 
cise without injury to his neighbors and the collective 
well-being. . . . They believe that the chief object of 
government should be the promotion of the public wel- 
fare by legislative and administrative means; that the 
processes of government should be open and visible and 
their results be incessantly published for approval or 
disapproval. They believe that a nation becomes great 
through industrial productiveness and the resulting in- 
ternal and external commerce; through the gradual 
increase of comfort and general well-being in the popu- 
lation, and through the advancement of science, letters, 
and art. . . . They think that the peace of the world can 
be best promoted by solemn public compacts between 
peoples, — not princes or cabinets, — compacts made 
to be kept, strengthened by mutual services and good 
offices, and watched over by a permanent international 
judicial tribunal authorized to call on the affiliated 
nations for whatever force may be necessary to induce 
obedience to its decrees. . . . The new ideals will still 
need the protection and support, both within and with- 
out each nation, of a restrained public force, acting 
under law, national and international, just as a sane 
mind needs as its agent asound and strong body. Health 
and vigor will continue to be the safeguards of morality, 
justice, and mercy.” 

Here again I maintained that the ideals of the Ameri- 
can people were not primarily physical comfort and pri- 
vate and national wealth, but rather morality, justice, 
mercy, and spiritual well-being in family and State. 


aye A LATE HARVEST 


~~ 


Two months later, in a letter printed in the same 
newspaper,! I said: — 

“The immediate duty of the United States is presum- 
ably to prepare, on the basis of its present army and 
navy, to furnish an effective quota of the international 
force, servant of an international tribunal, which wiil 
make the ultimate issue of this most abominable of wars 
not a truce, but a durable peace.” Now, duty is the 
offspring of knowledge and sentiments or loves. 


When Duty whispers low, Thou must, 
The youth replies, J can. 


This call to service for mankind was obeyed two years 
later by the American people with a whole-souled en- 
thusiasm which took small account of property losses, 
private or public, of huge government debts, of high 
taxes, or loss of life or health by their young men. 
Military success against autocratic governments and 
their selfish and cruel policies of conquest became the 
one object of the whole people, no matter at what cost. 
The National Administration had held back on going 
into the fierce war between the despotic and aggressive 
powers and the constitutional governments, had revived 
Washington’s advice to the little feeble commonwealth 
planted on a narrow strip of the eastern seacoast of what 
are now the continental United States, — that it keep 
out of European entanglements, — and contented itself 
with ineffective verbal protests against the violation of 
“neutral rights’; but in April 1917 Administration, 


111 December 1914. 


AMERICA’S NEXT CONTRIBUTION 273 


Congress, and people went into the horrible war with the 
hope and purpose of destroying autocracy in Europe, 
promoting democracy everywhere, providing interna- 
tional means of preventing war in the future, and 
making the world a better place for future generations 
to live in. Surely, this was a prodigious moral enter- 
prise, into which material and selfish considerations 
entered hardly at all. 

In the twenty or thirty years which preceded this high 
resolve, the American people had made some other con- 
tributions to civilization in addition to the five I dwelt 
upon in 1896. These should now be set forth. 

The American democracy has made a very important 
contribution to human welfare in that it has developed 
in its men a greater tenderness and a deeper reverence 
toward women and children than any other race or 
nation has ever exhibited. With this development has 
come in married pairs a spirit of sympathetic comrade- 
ship and of mutual affectionate effort for the benefit of 
children, which is a great improvement on the relations 
between the sexes that have heretofore prevailed in 
other nations or under other forms of government. Now, 
the attainment of happiness is more dependent on good 
relations between the sexes and on the domestic joys 
than on any other conditions of human life. Therefore, 
this American contribution to human welfare is funda- 
mental, legitimate, and durable; and it is a spiritual or 
moral contribution, not a material one. 

The physical conditions under which the American 
continent has been occupied by people of the English 


274 A LATE HARVEST 


and American stock account in part for this moral ac- 
complishment. All across the continent the real pioneer- 
ing line — often preceded by a skirmish line of male 
adventurers — has been a line of families, for which the 
men have provided such protection as was possible, 
while the women have shared heroically in the dangers 
and hardships of the life. As the pioneering line ad- 
vanced, it organized villages, districts, towns, churches, 
and schools which took common action for defense, for 
education, and for religion, and through these organiza- 
tions the family was protected and nurtured. For three 
hundred years this development of family life on fresh 
soil has gone on without any hindrance from feu- 
dal system or ecclesiastical power, and with a steady 
fostering of individualism in liberty. 

The physical conditions under which American soci- 
ety has developed have had another interesting effect on 
the character and habits of the people. Every genera- 
tion has encountered tremendous evils — some of them 
effects of adverse forces of nature and others results of 
man’s folly or wickedness — against which it has had 
to struggle, such as inordinate heat or cold, drought, 
storms, pests, pestilences, contagious diseases, and at- 
tacks by savages or by civilized men who allied them- 
selves with savages. Hence arose the practice in the 
American communities of resisting strenuously the evils 
which came upon them, and not only resisting but try- 
ing to prevent them. Codperation in resisting or pre- 
venting evils and wrongdoings has been the great train- 
ing-school of the American democracy. The initiative in 


AMERICA’S NEXT CONTRIBUTION 276 


this codperative action often came from individuals of 
“light and leading”; but the codperative effort was 
usually made by a group, sometimes small but often 
large, or was shared by the entire community. That co- 
operation of private citizens for public ends has charac- 
terized the American people for three hundred years. 
Two recent reforms in the field of public health — the 
Prohibition Amendment and the repression of venereal 
diseases and of the commercialized vice which produced 
and spread them — have been within recent years the 
products of this codperation of private citizens for public 
ends. The entrance of the United States into the World 
War gave a great impetus to both of these reforms; but 
the Prohibition legislation had been in gradual develop- 
ment for nearly thirty years in Kansas, and in several 
Southern states for ten or twelve years, while the way 
toward the repression and ultimate extinction of the 
venereal diseases had been shown for some years before 
the war by private societies. The results of the war pro- 
hibition of the sale of alcohol in and near the camps or 
barracks of the forming national army showed millions 
of Americans how the hideous evil of alcoholism could be 
successfully resisted and reduced, and with patience ex- 
terminated, and led directly to the adoption of the Pro- 
hibition Amendment by an overwhelming majority of 
the American voters. Thus the American democracy 
has led the way in strenuous conflict against one of the 
worst evils which have beset civilized mankind in modern 
times. Here are two admirable illustrations of the train- 
ing the American people have received during the three 


276 A LATE HARVEST 


centuries of their occupation of American soil, from their 
habit of resisting the physical or moral evils which their 
mode of life brought upon them, while they were free to 
either overcome or succumb to those evils. That is God’s 
way of forming sound character in either an individual 
orga race: 

In no field has this method of resisting evils been more 
conspicuous than in the field of medicine or public 
health. Accordingly, the profession of medicine has been 
held in higher esteem and been given a better status in 
American society than anywhere else in the world. It 
has exercised a stronger influence on community af- 
fairs than in any other nation. In many a village or 
small town all over the United States the doctor has 
been, and still is, the leading citizen, and the habitual 
adviser, not only of the town meeting, but of the prin- 
cipal families of the town or district. He is the person 
who can best tell his community how to attack and pre- 
vent the evils to which they find themselves exposed. 
Inrecent times the physician has often surpassed in 
American communities both the lawyer and the minis- 
ter as influential citizen. In many an American manu- 
facturing community to-day the physician is more com- 
petent than any other member to show the community 
how to resist or prevent the evils which afflict them. 
Codperative resistance to evils is in the modern world 
the great means of social and industrial progress; and 
in democratic communities it is the physician who 
gives the best example of accuracy in determining facts, 
caution in drawing inferences, and disinterestedness 
and public spirit in his mode of life. 


AMERICA’S NEXT CONTRIBUTION 277 


It is the fashion at home and abroad to represent 
American society and its motives as in the highest 
degree materialistic, and to cite as illustrations of this 
doctrine the extraordinary number and value of the in- 
ventions which American inventors have contributed to 
productive industries and the general means of liveli- 
hood, such as the telegraph, the telephone, the sewing 
machine, the mower, the reaper, the rotary printing- 
press, and the machines which get light, heat, and 
power from electricity. But while such inventions have, 
indeed, greatly contributed to man’s control over nature 
and to his utilization of natural resources, what kind 
of a product are the inventors themselves? They have 
been, and are to-day, men of unusual natural gifts who 
have developed as individuals in the freedom of demo- 
cratic society, a society which produces more abun- 
dantly than any other the individual of rare natural 
endowments, and then gives him freedom to develop in . 
accordance with his natural tendencies and devotions. 
In other words, the extraordinary new advantages which 
American inventiveness has given to the whole world 
are not primarily materialistic in origin, but a mental 
and spiritual result of the moral character and com- 
prehensive good-will which democracy develops in 
both individuals and groups. The new means of 
communication due to American inventiveness are 
no more materialistic in essence or in effect than 
the post office. They bring near together people 
who live wide apart, and so facilitate human inter- 
course, which is good and useful in the main, though 
sometimes indifferent or even bad. 


278 A LATE HARVEST 


It appears from this review that the American people 
have from the first settlement of Europeans on the At- 
lantic coast been steadily contributing not only to the 
promotion of liberty among mankind, but also to the 
improvement of all those conditions of human life which 
make for greater comfort, security, and happiness. The 
phrase in the Declaration of Independence that every- 
one is entitled to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap- 
piness”’ is highly significant as descriptive of the be- 
nevolent objects to which the American people have 
intentionally and persistently been striving to attain, 
not only for themselves but for all men. But how have ~ 
the American people been obliged to live, themselves, 
through these centuries of well-directed effort ? It is no 
exaggeration to say that they have been compelled to 
live ready to use force or violence against opponents 
—men or natural evils —and prepared to fight all 
the time. 

In the Pilgrim Colony at Plymouth every able-bodied 
man bore arms and was trained in the use of the guns of 
that day; and for more than a generation the military 
force of the colony was under the command of an im- 
petuous and combative professional soldier. In the Puri- 
tan Colony of Massachusetts Bay the same state of 
things existed from the moment when the pioneering 
Puritan farmers moved away from their ships and their 
harbors. The men were always armed and equipped for 
fighting. The Puritan men carried their guns when the 
family went to meeting, and kept vigilantly on their 
guard against the stealthy savages. | 


AMERICA’S NEXT CONTRIBUTION ' 279 


The Somes family, established early in the eighteenth 
century at Gloucester, Massachusetts, sent some of their 
men to explore the wealth of the Maine coast in forests, 
fish, and water power before the middle of the century ; 
but they waited to move as a family to the head of 
Somes’s Sound till after Wolfe’s victory over Montcalm 
settled the question, which race was to be supreme on 
that shore, the English or the French. The English 
colonists in New England took active part in the long 
series of combats with the Indians, and with the French 
and Indians in alliance, all the way to the Great Lakes 
and the Mississippi. When the Revolutionary War broke 
out, it appeared that, at least in New England, most of 
the young men not only knew how to fight, but were 
ready todo so. Many of the officers in the army which 
gathered so promptly in Cambridge were men of con- 
siderable experience in warfare, and the privates in the 
patriot soldiery not only attacked in flank and front 
veteran British troops retreating from Concord and Lex- 
ington, but within three months of the outbreak of the 
war actually repulsed twice some of the most experi- 
enced troops in the British army, who assaulted most 
gallantly the hastily constructed redoubt and fence on 
Bunker Hill. The Salem, Boston, and New York mer- 
chants who undertook to open trade with the northwest 
coast of America or the Far East habitually equipped 
their trading-vessels with plenty of guns and ammu- 
nition, and expected bloody encounters with savages, 
pirates, or the armed forces of the tribes with which they 
sought to trade; but they never had any difficulty in 


280 A LATE HARVEST 


procuring officers or crews for these vessels, which were 
expected to fight as well as meet the dangers of the seas. 

Within about twenty years of the adoption of the 
Constitution of the United States the American people 
found themselves again at war with Great Britain, and 
again they showed themselves competent and ready to 
fight, though they fought better on the water than on 
the land.’ 

Between 1815 and 18565 there was a long period during 
which bearing arms declined as a habit of the northern 
section of the American people ; and simultaneously skill 
in the use of firearms in gunning and hunting also de- 
clined. So the Civil War opened with plenty of fighting 
spirit in the Northern States, but with a lack of fighting 
skill which it took the Northern troops a year or two to 
overcome. The Southern whites, because of the exist- 
ence of slavery among them and their liking for shooting 
game as a sport and a means of livelihood, came better 
prepared than the Northerners to the early battles of the 
war. But before two years had elapsed the Northern 
troops had acquired as much skill as the Southern, and 
began to win success on hard-fought battlefields. Before 
the war ended, the combatants on the two sides fought 
with equal skill and spirit. The North prevailed, because 
it had more men and more military and industrial 
resources, and because it was fighting for Union and 
against slavery. 

Before another generation had passed, the United 
States went to war again, this time with Spain and more 
in the interest of Cuba than in their own. Again the 


AMERICA’S NEXT CONTRIBUTION 281 


fighting spirit of the American people promptly mani- 
fested itself on sea and land. The amount of fighting in 
and around Cuba was comparatively small, and was 
brought to an end by the generous offer on the part of 
the United States to send all the Spanish troops in Cuba 
home to Spain at the cost of the United States. The 
fighting, however, was much prolonged because the 
United States, having paid Spain twenty million dollars 
for the “sovereignty” (whatever that might mean) of 
the Philippine Islands, had to overcome by force the re- 
sistance of the Filipinos, or of a part of them, to the 
transfer. This fighting was of a kind and for an object 
highly displeasing to the American people as a whole; 
but it was persisted in till its object was attained. 
What the fighting spirit of the American people was 
in the World War it is needless to describe. It grew 
hotter and hotter as the horrors of the prodigious com- 
bat increased, and was demonstrated in every field of 
war endeavor, in the trenches, in the open assault, in the 
provision of munitions and supplies, and in the hospitals. 
It appeared in the energetic action of the national and 
state governments, and in the efficient operations of the 
numerous patriotic voluntary associations that under- 
took to supply the physical and mental needs of the 
soldiers and sailors. Here was a nation which had never 
before had a real conscript army, had experienced no 
attack on its own territory for more than a hundred 
years, and had never before sent an armed force into 
Europe, suddenly undertaking to pour an immense force 
into France, and to feed and supply it there in the 


282 A LATE HARVEST 


amplest manner, and all for no material objects or selfish 
ends of its own, but only to bring help to other nations 
whose liberties and rights were attacked. The American 
youth who died in France were not fighting for endan- 
gered homes, or for their own freedom to live and work 
as they pleased. They fought and suffered and died for 
the advancement and security of public liberty under 
law, for the diffusion of comfort and security among all 
classes and conditions of men, and in defense of human 
welfare and happiness wherever threatened. They had 
no hesitation about using force to promote these ends, or 
any scruples about killing and wounding their opponents 
in order to attain them. Again the fighting spirit in the 
American people, a result of their three centuries of 
experience on the fresh American continent! 

The Government of the United States has always 
maintained that it would not intervene forcibly in the 
domestic affairs of the Central and South American re- 
publics, and particularly of the Island republics in 
the Caribbean Sea. Nevertheless, both the preceding 
national Administration and the present have felt no 
difficulty in using the army and navy of the United 
States for armed intervention in the affairs of some of 
those republics; and neither of the two great political 
parties in the United States has thus far shown any dis- 
position to make an issue with either Administration on 
this subject. 

When the police force of Boston suddenly struck, and 
left the city for some hours at the mercy of hoodlums 
and criminals, there was an instant response from all 


AMERICA’S NEXT CONTRIBUTION 283 


classes to the call of the Governor for volunteers to re- 
place the strikers; and within a few weeks a carefully 
selected and well-equipped State Guard was organized 
to preserve order and protect property throughout the 
commonwealth. It then appeared that the fighting 
spirit in Massachusetts had in no way abated through 
disuse, or 1n consequence of the large additions — 
racially heterogeneous — which had been made to her 
population. 

There can be no doubt that all the philanthropic and 
spiritual contributions the American people have made 
to civilization — and such are by far their most impor- 
tant contributions — have depended for support and 
diffusion on their willingness to suffer and fight for them. 
To these very experiences of suffering in fighting is due 
the characteristic American advocacy of neutral rights, 
arbitration, and peace. 

When the Armistice was unexpectedly signed on 
November 11, 1918, the state of mind of the American 
soldiers in France underwent a sudden change. They all 
wanted to get home at once, and to resume their civil 
occupations; and many of them, but by no means all, 
avowed that they never meant to do any more fighting 
except in defense of their own country and people. 
Never again would they encounter the sufferings and 
hardships of the soldier’s life, or run the risk of being 
killed or disabled, for the sake of any other people or 
nation, or in any way contribute to the enforcement of 
any treaties or alliances which might hereafter be made 
for the benefit of the Allies, of the nations which had 


284 A LATE HARVEST 


been neutral during the war, or of the new States which 
had been created or were to be created as results of the 
war. No more sacrifice of American lives or American 
savings should be made for the benefit of foreigners. 
Shortly after the signing of the Armistice, some polit- 
ical leaders at Washington, made aware of this state of 
mind among the returning soldiers, began to talk about 
the secure isolation of the United States and the self- 
sufficiency of their resources, and to preach the dubious 
doctrines expressed in the phrases, “safety first” and 
“America first.” These slogans are both capable of good 
uses ; but these politicians used them in their selfish and 
ignoble significations. When the probable terms of the 
Treaty of Versailles became known, a formidable pro- 
portion of the members of the Senate gave notice that 
they should vote against the ratification of any treaty 
under which the American people might assume an obli- 
gation to enforce the decisions of the Assembly and 
Council of the League of Nations. Partisan politics had 
something to do with this demonstration in the Senate 
against the Treaty and the League of Nations which was 
incorporated with it; but there were members of the 
Senate who really believed that the conduct of the 
American people toward their late comrades in arms and 
toward the promotion of human welfare in general, 
political, economic, or social, might properly be there- 
after determined solely by the commercial and financial 
interests of the American people, and not by any philan- 
thropic or humanitarian emotions or sympathies. The 
platform of the Republican Party endorsed this de- 


AMERICA’S NEXT CONTRIBUTION — 285 


moralizing doctrine. This was an extraordinary de- 
parture from the moral principles which the whole ex- 
perience of the American democracy had inculcated and 
the birth of the Republican Party had nobly illustrated. 
In November 1920, the Republican Party returned to 
power, after an interval of eight years, with an over- 
whelming majority in both the Senate and the House 
and complete possession of the administrative organiza- 
tion. The new Administration believed that it had re- 
ceived from the people an emphatic mandate to prevent 
the United States from incurring any obligation to assist 
Europe, on either the political or the economic side, to 
recover from the desolation and chaos which resulted 
from the war, and particularly to keep the United States 
out of the League of Nations, because one article in that 
covenant contemplated the possible use of some inter- 
national force to prevent outbreaks of war. 
Accordingly, the United States have taken no direct 
official part in any of the international efforts to rescue 
Europe from its present deplorable condition, although 
they have sent unofficial observers, or lookers-on, to 
some of the conferences or meetings on means of rescue. 
The attitude of the American Government toward all 
these efforts has been cold and unsympathetic, and as a 
matter of fact the efforts of the other nations have been 
crippled by the abstention of the United States. The 
League of Nations has been well organized, and its mem- 
bership having been much increased, it has done some 
effective work toward the reestablishment of order in 
Europe and the prevention of sporadic fighting; but it 


286 AULA CE ELS RV Boi 


cannot accomplish the objects for which it was created 
until the United States take an active part in its work. 
Why does the American Government maintain this weak 
and ungenerous attitude? Because it believes that the 
American people have turned their backs on their his- 
tory, including that of the five years from 1914 to 1919, 
and have decided that they will fight no more and suffer 
no more for other peoples or in the general cause of 
liberty, justice, and peace for mankind. 

There is serious doubt whether any large part of the 
American people has suffered this moral collapse. In the 
Presidential election of 1920 some temporary motives 
took effect on considerable bodies of voters. Thus the 
German-Americans wished to express their disapproba- 
tion of the hatred of Germany which American fighting 
in Europe on the side of the Allies had engendered ; and 
it seemed to them at the moment that their only way to 
express that feeling was to vote the Republican ticket. 
Again, the Irish-Americans, contrary to all precedent, 
voted the Republican ticket in many states and munici- 
palities, because that seemed to them the best way at 
the moment to express their hatred for Great Britain 
and their desire to see the British Empire disrupted. 
Furthermore, in several states and large communities 
the management of the Democratic Party was so bad 
that it was difficult for a patriotic citizen to vote for any 
of the candidates that management nominated. 

In the two years which have elapsed since the last 
Presidential election divisions have appeared within the 
Republican Party itself on such important matters as 


i) 


mt oy 


AMERICA’S NEXT CONTRIBUTION ‘287 


the Bonus Bill, the Emergency Tariff Bill, the Perma- 
nent Tariff Bill, and the proper dealing by the govern- 
ment with the strikes which now threaten the comfort 
and security of the public and the business prosperity of 
the whole country. Clearly the American public is be- 
ginning to desire that their Government assume a vigor- 
ous and generous attitude both at home and abroad, an 
attitude determined not by cowardly selfishness or timid 
circumspection but by brave disinterestedness. It is 
highly significant that hundreds of college students and 
young graduates are at this moment attending at their 
own charges camps for military instruction and training 
in which the teachers are men who saw service in the late 
war. These youths propose to be ready to serve effec- 
tively when next their country summons them to fight ; 
they do not like the present attitude of the American 
Government toward suffering humanity, and hope and 
expect that the American people will shortly return, at 
whatever risk, to their traditional policies in favor of 
arbitration in international disputes, the development 
of international law,the maintenance of an International 
Court with the usual sanctions for its decisions, and the 
abolition of war for expansion or conquest. These young 
men constitute an important element in the new voters. 
The ex-soldiers who rashly say that they will fight no 
more have no influence with them. 

In the hope of making some contribution to the settle- 
ment of Europe and the prevention of war, while still 
keeping America out of European alliances and treaties, 
the American Government called and led the Washing- 


288 A LATE HARVEST 


ton Conference. In both the original and the revised 
agenda prepared by the Department of State, reduction 
of land forces appeared as one of the prime subjects for 
consideration at the Conference; but when France de- 
clared that she could not reduce her army effectively 
unless she were promised aid by Great Britain and the 
United States in case she were again attacked, the reduc- 
tion of land forces was dropped incontinently by com- 
mon consent. The United States would give no such 
promise. Now, it is impossible to restore Europe, either 
politically or economically, unless the burden of main- 
taining armies which withdraw all the able-bodied young 
men of each yearly class from productive industry for a 
long period — such as three years, two years, or even 
one year — can be lifted, and this great item of expendi- 
ture be removed from each national budget. For ex- 
ample, France cannot reestablish a sound budget and 
acquire again a sound currency unless her expenditures 
on her army can be largely reduced. On the other hand, 
it is obvious that every nation in Europe, and in North 
and South America as well, must maintain a trained and 
disciplined military force which can be called upon at 
any moment by the national government to preserve 
order and prevent violence in any part of the country. 
How to train such a national force at low cost, and 
to keep it always efficient and on instant call, the 
Swiss Republic has shown the rest of the world; but 
this lesson can be accepted by the other European 
nations only when the United States will take the 
responsibility of urging it. 


AMERICA’S NEXT CONTRIBUTION 289 


At the Washington Conference the American Secre- 
tary of State carried by great audacity and firmness a 
serious reduction in the cost of the navies of the leading 
naval powers; but the reduced navies are to be kept in 
prime fighting order with all the latest improvements in 
submarine and aérial activity. This is a gain for the 
budgets of the few naval powers which is well worth 
while, but has little effect on the bankrupt condition of 
the majority of the European Powers, and slight if any 
effect toward the abolition of war. The pacts made at 
Washington with regard to Pacific Ocean affairs and Far 
Eastern powers contained no provision for the enforce- 
ment of the agreements. If any nation violates or dis- 
regards them, the remedy is only more conference. At 
the Washington Conference the United States did not 
undertake to use its army or navy, or any part thereof, 
to enforce on land or sea the agreements into which they 
entered. The American people seem still to hold the 
position that they will make no more sacrifices for the 
promotion in the world of justice, liberty, and peace. 
How can any lover of his country believe that the Amer- 
ican spirit has really sunk so far? How can anyone fail 
to see that no progress can be made toward the abolition 
of war until America becomes a full partner in that holy 
enterprise, and takes all its risks? 

Nevertheless, the Washington Conference, in spite of 
its failure to promise the use of America’s armed forces 
to support the decisions of the new International Court 
and of the Assembly and Council set up by the League 
of Nations, and in spite of its general inconclusiveness, 


290 A LATE HARVEST 


did make some gains toward the adoption of better 
means than militarism and war of settling international 
disputes. It stopped for a time the ruinous competitive 
building of navies. In the Four Power Treaty concern- 
ing Pacific Islands the United States agree to take part 
in the discussion of any failure to observe the treaty, 
although the matter to be discussed is no concern of 
theirs — a distinct step in advance. The abrogation of 
the Anglo-Japanese alliance was a real gain toward 
peace in the Orient ; and so was the consideration given 
by the Conference to the grave Chinese problems which 
were brought before it. For these accomplishments 
American patriots may be thankful, while they deeply 
regret that the Conference stopped so far short of the 
bold measures needed. 

One excuse can be offered for the present reluctance of 
the American people to take their full share in inter- 
national action. They have always objected to national 
action 1n general, not excepting national action in favor 
of education and the public health. State Rights seemed 
during the period of the Civil War and the years that 
immediately preceded and followed that war chiefly a 
doctrine held in the Southern States and based on the 
desire to resist the attack on slavery by the Northern 
States; but in reality the policy of State Rights com- 
mends itself in the Northern States on many local issues, 
and even on issues which are inevitably of national 
scope, like prohibition, tariff, quarantine, irrigation, con- 
servation, and national parks. Some recent events have 
opened the mind of the people to the indispensableness 


AMERICA’S NEXT CONTRIBUTION 291 


of national action against evils which take effect, or are 
liable to take effect, all over the country. It is no use to’ 
eradicate hookworm disease in spots. It must be exter- 
minated on large areas, and then every recurrence must 
be detected and stopped by an authority which can 
operate at short notice wherever in a broad territory the 
disease may reappear. It was not until prohibition was 
ordered by a national enactment that a reduction of the 
monstrous evil of alcoholism became possible and its 
ultimate extermination probable. The separate States 
could not deal intelligently with the engineering problem 
of irrigation from streams that flowed through several 
states, or along their borders. The immigration problem 
could not be dealt with in any satisfactory way until the 
national government took control of it. The Weather 
Bureau must be supported by the national government. 
The late war taught emphatically that the State Militias 
must be converted into National Guards, and in wartime 
brought under the control and direction of the national 
military authorities. These vivid lessons have taught 
many Americans that the historical objection to national 
action requires modification to meet the new. conditions 
of the Federal Union. 

The proposals made by the present Administration 
with regard to subsidies are not only in the highest de- 
gree inexpedient with reference to national economics, 
but tend to postpone the recovery of the American 
people from their moral collapse in respect to inter- 
national affairs. The American people and government 
went wisely into ship-building in hot haste, without 


292 A LATE HARVEST 


regard to cost, the moment they declared war on Germa- 
ny in 1917, and showed much wisdom as well as energy 
in the prosecution of that work. They saw that with the 
developing power of the German submarine more vessels 
were indispensable means of prosecuting the war. It was 
martial zeal which impelled them to this extravagant ex- 
penditure; and many Americans were severely disap- 
pointed when the Armistice came before the real fruits of 
the heavy expenditures of our government on shipping 
had been exhibited on sea and land. 

But what has happened in respect to expenditures on 
shipping during the five years since the Armistice was 
signed? We kept on spending many hundred millions of 
dollars a year on a navy and an American commercial 
marine for which we had no use, and which cannot be 
manned by Americans. The sailor’s life has ceased to 
have attraction for intelligent young Americans. They 
wisely prefer employments on land that are compara- 
tively free from the hardships and exposures the com- 
mon sailor and stoker must endure, and do not involve 
prolonged absences from home and friends. So the 
American fleets, naval or commercial, cannot be manned 
by Americans or be made profitable to private owners, 
unless by the payment of large subsidies unjustly ex- 
torted from the mass of the taxpayers. Hence, legis- 
lative attempts to give American bottoms advantages 
over foreign bottoms in both exporting and importing 
goods, a policy which would be sure to breed inter- 
national bitterness and strife, and to feed American 
selfishness rather than American disinterestedness. 


- ~~ 


AMERICA’S NEXT CONTRIBUTION 293 


Every American policy now should be generous as well 
as just. 

What then should American patriots advocate and 
hope for in respect to American participation in inter- 
national action to restore stable government to the 
countries of Europe, old or new, repair the losses in 
population, public health, means of transportation, and 
agricultural and manufacturing productiveness, and to 
efface as fast as possible the distrusts and hatreds which 
the war engendered? Our Government should enter 
heartily into the existing League of Nations, take a 
sympathetic share in every discussion broached in the 
League, and be ready to take more than its share in all 
the responsibilities which unanimous action of the 
nations constituting the League might impose. America 
should cease to keep out of the Paris Covenant, “the 
greatest step in recorded history in the betterment of 
international relations,” as ex-President Taft said of it 
in March 1919, and give over completely every fear of 
being called upon to fight, no matter where, in support 
of the decisions of the League. That fear is now and 
always has been absolutely unworthy of the American 
people, false to its history, and even falser to its hopes. 

The next American contribution to civilization should 
be full participation in the safe conduct of those world 
affairs through which the enlightened common interests 
of mankind are served, first, by joining heartily the 
League of Nations for the immediate salvation of Europe 
and the Near East, and then by advocating steadily for 
all the world Federalism, elastic and progressive Law, 


294 A LATE HARVEST 


cooperative management and discipline in machinery 
industries, the emancipation of children from fear, harsh 
domination, and premature labor, the furtherance of 
preventive medicine and public health, and the opening 
for everybody of the delightful and sustaining vision of 
freedom, aspiration, and hope. 


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BIBLIOGRAPHY, 1914-1924? 


* Tue Modernizing of Asia: Christian Register, 30 April 1914 
’ How I Have Kept My Health and Working Power till Eighty: 
Ladies’ Home ‘fournal, April 1914 
“ Some Fires in the College Buildings: Ra Graduates’ Magazine, 
June 1914 
* The Woman That Will Survive: Dennen jes 1914 
’ Need of Conserving Beauty and Freedom of Nature in Modern 
Life: National Geographic Magazine, July 1914 
» Some Contributions of President Wilson’s Administration to Inter- 
national Policies and Conduct: Harper's Weekly, 22 August 
1914 
The Causes of the Sudden Outburst of Savagery in Europe: New 
York Times, 4 September 1914; included in The Road towards 
Peace, 1915 
Imperialistic and Democratic Ideals of National Greatness — 
a Contrast: New York Times, 22 September 1914; included in 
The Road towards Peace, 1915 
« America and the Issues of the European War: New York Times, 
2 October 1914; included in The Road towards Peace, 1915 
America’s Duty in Relation to the European War: The Road 
towards Peace, 1915; also a Boston Business Women’s Club 
pamphlet, 1914 
Introduction to Animal Experimentation and Medical Progress by 
Dr. W. W. Keen, 1914 
~ The Improvement of Relations between Electric Railways and 
Their Employees: Electric Railway fFournal, 10 October 1914 
* Bringing Up Boys: Delineator, October 1914 
\ The European War: Christian Register, 22 October 1914 
v Injurious Policies of Labor Unions: World’s Work, October 1914 
- The Sources and the Outcome of the European War: New York 
Times, 17 November 1914; included in The Road towards 
Peace, 1915 
~ Health Education in New York State: Health News, November 
1914 
Letter in honor of Henry L. Higginson’s eightieth birthday, 18 
November 1914: Harvard Alumni Bulletin, 25 November 1914 
1 See Introduction, page viii. 


x 


298 A LATE HARVEST 


The Road towards Peace: Cosmopolitan Student, December 1914 

The Church and the Labor Question: Christian Herald, 2 December 
1914 

A Hopeful Road to Lasting Peace in Europe: New York Times, 
Boston Herald, 11 December 1914; included in The Road 
towards Peace, 191§ 

An International Force Must Sn BOrE an International Tribunal: 
American Society for Judicial Settlement of International 
Disputes, No. 19 


‘ “Worefathers’ Day’’: reprint of an address to the New England 


Society in the City of New York; included in The Road 
towards Peace, 1915 | 

The Crying Need of a New Christianity: American Unitarian 
Association pamphlet, No. 277 

“A Loving God Rules the Universe” : Congregationalist, 31 Decem- 
ber 1914 


* Husbands and Fathers: Delineator, January 1915 
<* What Is the College for? Education, January 1915 »\2" 
w Lessons of the Colossal War to March Ninth: included in The Road 


towards Peace, 1915 

Charles Francis Adams: Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical 
Society, April 1915 

The Need of Broader Views about Monopoly, Competition, and 
Coéperation: Market World, 10 April 1915 

National Efficiency Best Developed under Free Governments: 
Atlantic Monthly, April 1915 


' Basis for Peace in Europe (correspondence with S. O. Levinson 


of Chicago): New York Times, 3 May 1915 
Charles Sedgwick Minot: Science, 14 May 1915 
The Lesson of the Lusitania: New York Times, Boston Herald, 15 
May 1915 
The Moral Effects of War: Harvard Alumni Bulletin, 2 June 1915 
The Potency and Tenacity of the Jewish Race: Menorah Fournal, 


June 1915 


“ Sure Inferences from Eleven Months of the Greatest of Wars: New 


York Times, 18 July 1915 

Main Points of Attack in the Campaign for Public Health: Social 
Hygiene, September 1915 

International Sympathies: McGill University Magazine, October 
IgI5 

Changes Needed in Secondary Education in the United States: 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 299 


General Education Board publication, 1916; School and Society, 
March 1916 
» Harvard Club of New York City, Fiftieth Anniversary: Harvard 
Alumni Bulletin, 10 November 1915 
The War’s Aftermath—What Will It Mean to Social Service: 
| Social Service Review, December 1915 
v Military Training in Schools and Colleges: Harvard Alumni Bulle- 
tin, 22 December 1915 
The Fruits, Prospects, and Lessons of Recent Biological Science: 
Science, 31 December 1915 
Can the Civil Service of a Democracy Be Made Efficient ? Good 
Government, January 1916 
* Should America Join a League of “Faith-keeping Nations”? 
New York Times, 9 January 1916 
' American Interests and Duties in the War: New York Times, 
Boston Herald, 12 March 1916 
* “Specialized Administration” : The Man versus the State, by Herbert 
Spencer, edition of 1916 by Truxton Beale 
The Functions and the Composition of the Board of Overseers : 
Harvard Alumni Bulletin, 24 May 1916 
* American Ideals and the War: New York Times, Boston Herald, 
Philadelphia Public Ledger, 27 July 1916 
Military Training for Schoolboys: Booklet of the Peace Committee 
of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Friends, 1916 
* What Is an American? Collier's Weekly, 12 August 1916; pamphlet 
of the National Immigration League, No. 205, October 1916 
Achievements of the Democratic Party : 4tlantic Monthly, October, 
1916; New York Times, Boston Herald, Philadelphia Public 
Ledger, 26 September 1916 
American Ideals and the European Crisis: Manchester Guardian 
(England), 3 October 1916 
Achievements of the Democratic Party (additional to previous 
article): New York Times, Boston Herald, Philadelphia Public 
Ledger, 22 October 1916 
’ What Sort of Navy and Army Does the United States Need? 
World's Work, November 1916 
’ Method of Electing a President: New York World, 23 November 
1916 
* Teachings of the Great War with Respect to Christianity: Collier’s 
Weekly, 23 December 1916 
~ Advantages of Poor Men’s Sons: De/ineator, January 1917 


300 A LATE HARVEST 


Epes Sargent Dixwell: Boston Latin School Register, February 1917 

Universal Military Service: National Service, February 1917 

_ A Free and Open Christian Church: Christian Register, 15 February 
1917; American Unitarian Association pamphlet, No. 285 

Case against Compulsory Latin: General Education Board publi- 
cation, 1917; Atlantic Monthly, March 1917 

The Small Family; Effects of New Employments for Women on 
Marriage and Childbearing: Delineator, March 1917 

The United States Needs a Large Army, a Democratic Army: 
New York Times, Boston Herald, Philadelphia Public Ledger, 
11 March 1917; Economic World, 17 March 1917 

Why Should Americans Be Optimistic? Philadelphia North Ameri- 
can, 13 March 1917 

‘ The Need of a Democratic Army for the United States: Economic 
World, 24 March 1917 

The Agassiz House on Quincy Street: Harvard Alumni Bulletin, 
29 March 1917 

« Canadian Act for the Settlement of Industrial Disputes: The Survey, 
31 March 1917 

Changes of a Century in Theological Education at Harvard Uni- 
versity : Harvard University pamphlet, 1917 

Political and Social Creed . . . Accepted by Thoughtful Americans: 
New York Sun, 8 April 1917 

' Advantages of the Swiss System of Military Training: National 
Economic League Quarterly, May 1917 

Home Rule: Boston Herald, 18 May 1917: New York World pam- 
phlet, 1917 

Two Serious Dangers for Democracy: Boston Sunday Post, 20 May 
1917; New York World, 22 May 1917 

Joseph Hodges Choate: Harvard Alumni Bulletin, 24 May 1917 


.~ How to Use Time for Reading, 1918-19: Collier’s Weekly, 13 July 


1918 

‘ The War Situation—Gains from the War: New York Times, 5 
August 1917 

The Road to Industrial Peace: Nation’s Business, August 1917; 
Electric Steel Foundry, Portland, Ore., pamphlet 

Is an Informal Peace Conference Now Possible? New York Times, 
Boston Herald, 27 August 1917; Scientific Monthly, October 
IQI7 

Social Hygiene: New York Evening Post, 28 August 1917; Survey, 
8 September 1917 


— 


v 


¥ 


BIBLIOGRAPHY | 301 


The Alumni at President Felton’s Inauguration: Harvard Gradu- 
ates’ Magazine, September 1917 

Informal Steps towards Peace: New York Times, magazine section, 
Philadelphia Public Ledger, 7 October 1917 


“The Future of Medicine: Harvard Alumni Bulletin, 25 October 


1917; Boston Medical and Surgical Fournal, 1 November 1917 
Dr. Hollis Burke Frissell’s Influence on Popular Education: The 
Southern Workman, November 1917 


* Are Modern Civilizations to Perish Like the Ancient ? Boston Herald, 


24 December 1917; Chiugai Shinron (Japan), November 1917 
War Prohibition: King Alcohol Dethroned, 1917 
What I Am Expecting and Hoping for after the War — in Religion, 
in Industry, in Politics: Seattle (Washington) Daily Call, 
I January 1918 


~ Letter Regarding Decoration by fie Prussian Crown : Boston Herald, 


4 January 1918 
Proportional Representation League: Proportional Representation 
Review, January 1918 


“ Need of an Alliance: New York Times, Boston Herald, Philadelphia 


Public Ledger, 25 February 1918 
Training the Powers of Observation, Memory, and Correct Descrip- 
tion All Together: Visual Education, 1918 


~ The Future Supremacy of the Democracies and the Means of 


< 


< 
X\ 


Securing It: New York Times, Boston Herald, 27 April 1918; 
Philadelphia Public Ledger, 28 April 1918 
Can Man Live without Drink? Forum, April 1918 


“British Labor-Party Programme: National Economic League 


Quarterly, May 1918 


“The Modern School : Education, May 1918 


Educational Changes Needed for the War and Still More for the 
Subsequent Peace: Education, May 1918 

Inauguration of President Neilson, Smith College, Northampton, 
Mass. : Smith College publication, 1918 

The Jewish Contribution to Modern Social Ethics : Menorah Fournal, 
June 1919; Fewish Advocate, 9 May 1918 

Progress towards Industrial Peace in Great Britain and the United 
States: Boston Herald, Philadelphia Public Ledger, 21 July 1918 

Is Tobacco Essential? Forum, July 1918 

An Intimate and Lasting Alliance between Great Britain and the 
United States of America: The Chronicle (New York), August 
1918 


302 A LATE HARVEST 


Vienna Proposal for Non-binding Conference: Boston Herald, 17 
September 1918 
. Certain Defects in American Education and the Remedies for Them : 
Reed College Record, September 1918 
v Arthur Theodore Lyman: Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical 
Society, November 1918 
v President Wilson’s Appeal and the Answers of Republican Leaders: 
New York Times, 31 October 1918 
“ Defects in American Education Revealed by the War: Inter- 
America, January 1919; School and Society, 4 January 1919; 
School Life, 16 December 1918; Pamphlet of the League for 
Political Education, New York City, 1918 
An Interesting Boy: The American Boy, December 1918 
“ League of Nations: National Economic League Quarterly, January 
191g 
V The Kind of Army That the United States Should Hereafter Main- 
tain: New York Times, Boston Herald, 5 January 1919 
“ State Board of Labor and Industries: Current Affairs, 6 January 


1919 
“ Law School Students, Harvard University: Harvard Alumni Bulle- 
tin, 20 February 1919 
~ Capital and Labor: New York Tribune, 24 February 1919 
’ Social Welfare Committee of Massachusetts Legislature: Boston 
Evening Transcript, 14 March 1919; Survey, 12 April 1919; 
Red Cross Magazine, July 1919; Washington Sunday Star, 
3 August 1919; Massachusetts House Document No. 1484; 
Chamber of Commerce, U. S. A., Referendum No. 27 
/ America Will “Carry On”: Boston Herald, New York Times, 12 
April 1919; English-Speaking World, June 1919 
“Introduction to The Chaos in Europe, by Frederick Moore, 1919 
_ Introduction to American Ideals, edited by W. J. Pelo and Emma 
Searl, 1919 
© Centenary of James Russell Lowell: Cambridge Tribune, 1 March 
1919; Harvard Graduates’ Magazine, June 1919; Cambridge 
/ Historical Society pamphlet, 1919 
“ Ratify the Treaty Forthwith: New York Times, Philadelphia Public 
Ledger, Boston Herald, 1 July 1919 
¥ Prompt Ratification with or without Reservations: New York 
Times, Boston Herald, 22 August 1919 
/ A Great Ethical and Educational Adventure for Jews: Maccabean, 
August 1919 





BIBLIOGRAPHY 303 


’ The Road towards Industrial Peace: Boston Herald, New York 
Times, 21 September Ig19 
’ Francis Humphreys Storer: Proceedings of the American Academy 
of Arts and Sciences, September 1919 
Social Hygiene: Social Hygiene, October i919 
/ Major Henry L. Higginson: Harvard Alumni Bulletin, 27 November 
gl 
“ Programme for Education in Massachusetts: School and Society, 
20 December Ig919 
“ What Does Christmas Mean to the World This Year? New York 
Evening Post, 20 December 1919 
¥ Dudley A. Sargent: Memorial Volume, 27 December 1919 
¥ Road to Unity among the Christian Churches: American Unitarian 
Association, 1919 
* Major Henry L. Higginson: Proceedings of the Massachusetts His- 
torical Society, December 1919 
¥ What Influence Should the Ex-soldier Exert in Moulding the 
Governmental Policies of His Country? The Home Sector, 31 
January 1920 
/ The Senate Obstructionists’ Estimate of the American People: 
New York Times, Boston Herald, 16 February 1920; United 
States Congressional Record, 17 February 1920 
¥ Harvard Square Business-Mens’ Association: Harvard Alumni 
Bulletin, 19 February 1920 
Wire: Langdell: Harvard Law Review, February 1920 
“ Public Opinion about Strikes: New York Times, Boston Herald, 
: 7 March 1920 | 
¥ The Labor Problem: Consensus, March 1920 
/ New Education for Women: Good Housekeeping, April 1920 
¥ The Probable Victory of Prohibition in the United States: New 
York Evening Post, 4 June 1920 
/ Federal Department of Education: School and Society, 5 June 1920 
v Jacob H. Schiff: Bar Harbor Times, 29 September 1920 
/ The Voter’s Choice in the Coming Election: Atlantic Monthly, 
October 1920 
y “The Progressive Movement in Education: School and Society, 21 
: January 1922 
Y Present and Future Social Hygiene in America: International 
Fournal of Public Health (Geneva, Switzerland), January— 
February 1921 
J Jacob H. Schiff: Menorah Fournal, February 1921 


304 A LATE HARVEST 


’ Better Education the Safeguard of Democracy: The Nation’s 
Business, February 1921 
“ The Return to Normal Prosperity : World’s Work, March 1921 
v The Influence of Women on the Manners and Customs of Men: 
Harvard Alumni Bulletin, 14 April 1921 
” Independence of Journalism: Christian Register, 28 April 1921 
Vv Ideals, Aspirations, Conduct: New York Evening Post, 24 May 1921 
¥ Reduction of Wages: Consensus, May 1921 
* Anglo-American Cooperation: The London Times, 4 July 1921 
v AReview of Modern Democracies, by Lord Bryce: New York Evening 
Post, 30, July 1920) a4) 
/ The Farmers and the Republic: Farm and Home, July 1921 
/ The Joyful Duty of the Layman to the Modern Church in the 
Worship of God and the Service of Man: Christian Register, 
1 December 1921 
American Education since the Civil War: Rice Institute (Texas) 
pamphlet, Vol. IX, No. 1, January 1922 
¥ James Bryce and Armenia: New Armenia, January-February 1922 
y The World’s Call to America: New York Evening Post, 18 January 
1922 
« Melville M. Bigelow and the Legal Profession: Boston University 
Law Review, January 1922 
Y¥ Review of the Life and Letters of Henry Lee Higginson: Atlantic 
Monthly, January 1922 
/ The Road to American Prosperity : New York Times, Boston Herald, 
19 February 1922 
/ James Bryce: Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 
February 1922 
’ The Traditions of Harvard College: Harvard Alumni Bulletin, 16 
March 1922: Harvard Memories, 1923 
Vv The Trouble with the Civil Service: New York Evening Post, 5 May 
1922 : 
/ Some European Restoration Must be Political: New York Times, 
Boston Herald, 22 May 1922 
* The Smirch of Bonus Legislation: The Nation’s Business, May 1922 
The Function of a University: Harvard dlumni Bulletin, 22 June 
1922; Harvard Memories, 1923 
\ Strike or Umpire? New York Times, Boston Herald, 1 July 1922 
» Will the Mind of Man Outgrow Religion? National Pictorial 
Monthly, July 1922 
Introduction to Thomas Hopkinson, a New Englander, 1922 


oe ae 


BIBLIOGRAPHY | 305 


f Abraham Lincoln: New England Historic-Genealogical Register, 
\ July 1922 | 
The Next American Contribution to Civilization: Foreign Affairs, 
| September 1922. 
“The Boston Fire, 1872: Current Affairs, 30 October 1922 
y Robert Samuel Rantoul: The Essex Institute Historical Collections, 
October 1922 
¥ Function of Education in Heterogeneous Democracies: Harvard 
Alumni Bulletin, 9 November 1922 
»~ The Business Man and Our Educational System: Current Affairs, 
27 November 1922 
» Rowing at Harvard in the 1850's: H Book of Harvard Athletics, 1923 
y Louis Pasteur: Boston Medical and Surgical Fournal, 1 February 
192 
w The Antioch Plan of Education: Harvard Alumni Bulletin, 15 
February 1923 3 
y America’s Duty in the Near East: World’s Work, February 1923 
/ The Objects of Democracy: Current History Magazine, March 1923 
/ Prohibition: Consensus, April 1923 
v7 Some Effects of High Wages in the Building Trades: New York 
Times, 13 May 1923 
Harvard Memories — Traditions of Harvard College; Function of 
a University; Harvard Yard and Buildings: 1923 
~ National Coal Association : Pamphlet of the National Coal Associa- 
tion, 1923 
“Bridging the Gap between College and Vocation: Boston Traveler, 
g June 1923 
Oliver Wendell Holmes: Harvard Graduates’ Magazine, June 1923 
Readjustment in Industrial Relations: Consensus, July 1923 
“Blight of Standardization: New York Times, Boston Herald, 17 
August 1923 
“ What are the Marks of an Educated Man? Boston Sunday Globe, 
21 October 1923 
V Review of Meade’s Headquarters, 1862-65: Yale Review, December 
1923 
Closed Shop or Open? Harvard Alumni Bulletin, 13 December 
1923 
Toleration and Unity in Religion Would Promote Peace among 
Nations; Harvard Alumni Bulletin, 10 January 1924 
v Introduction to Education Moves Ahead, by E. R. Smith, 1924 








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